DUBAI Saudi Arabia on Wednesday brushed aside as "unfounded lies" Iraqi accusations that the kingdom was maltreating Iraqi refugees living in a border camp since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"The claims of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry are unfounded lies and falsehoods," the official Saudi Press Agency quoted a Defense Ministry official as saying.

On Sunday, Baghdad appealed to the refugees to return home and accused the Saudi authorities of "inhuman and immoral practices" against more than 5,000 Iraqis living in the Rafha Camp.

The Saudi official said: "The care and good treatment offered by the government of Saudi Arabia to the Iraqi refugees is rarely found in any refugee camp in the world."

He said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had representatives in the camp around the clock and that the refugees were free to leave. Earlier this month, the UNHCR said dozens of the refugees staged a hunger strike to press for resettlement abroad. The refugees are the last of 33,000 Iraqis stranded in Saudi Arabia after a U.S.-led coalition in 1991 ended Iraq's seven-month occupation of Kuwait.

Some 3,000 have voluntarily returned to Iraq, while about 25,000 have moved to Europe, Australia or North America, the UNHCR said.

Most of the refugees still in Saudi Arabia have been refusing to return home, despite financial incentives of up to $2,700 offered by Saudi Arabia, according to the UNHCR.

Baghdad has pledged to facilitate their return to Iraq and grant them amnesty.

Many of the refugees were Iraqi war prisoners or Shia Muslims who fled the country after Iraqi forces crushed a post-war rebellion in the southern Iraq.