Nonetheless, Russia still tops the list of countries with the highest number of asylum seekers, followed by Serbia and Montenegro (5,736 people), and Turkey (4,709), the UNHCR reports. Most of the asylum applications from Russian nationals were lodged in January to March 2004 with the governments of Austria (1,848), the Czech Republic (882), France (840), Germany (722), and Belgium (337).
The number of refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, the two countries that topped the UNCHR list in 2001 and 2002, shrank by, respectively, 31 percent and 29 percent in the first quarter of this year.
The total number of people seeking asylum in any of the world's 29 most developed countries dropped to 92,679, 16 percent down from last year's figure.
For the first time in years, the quarterly number of asylum applications from refugees in the aforementioned countries fell beyond the 100,000 mark, the UNCHR official spokesman, Rod Redmond, said at a news briefing at the United Nations' Geneva headquarters.
In the year's first three months, the number of asylum applications submitted in twenty-four of the European Union member countries (excluding Italy, which does not provide relevant data for the UN) dropped by 18 percent, the UNHCR reports. For the United States, the decrease was 8 percent.
Over the period, the largest number of asylum applications was submitted in France (15,740), the United Kingdom (10,590), Germany (10,170), and the U.S. (9,710).
