UN goodwill ambassador and Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has travelled to Iraq on a humanitarian mission and met with officials to demand help for people displaced by the war.
Although a scheduled press conference at the US embassy was cancelled, the Oscar-winning actress spoke to CNN telling the station that she wanted more to be done for the Iraqi families driven from their homes.
The 32-year-old said: "There are over two million displaced people and there never seems to be a real coherent plan to help them. There's lots of good will and lots of discussion but there seems to be a lot of talk at the moment and a lot of pieces that need to be put together."
The US embassy in Baghdad confirmed that Jolie had lunch with US troops serving in Iraq and had held a meeting with their top commander General David Petraeus, senior diplomats and Iraq's minister for displaced people.
A US embassy official told AFP: "She is here in her official capacity as a UN goodwill ambassador to meet with US, Iraqi and NGO officials to discuss internally displaced persons."
She also held talks in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone with the UN head of mission Staffan di Mistura and there were also plans for her to meet Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a US official said.
Jolie told CNN: "Of the two million internally displaced, it's estimated 58% are under 12-years-old. It's a very high number of people in a very, very vulnerable situation and a lot of young kids".
"So far, the different US officials I met with and different local people I've met with all have shared concerns, very, very strongly. They have spoken out about the humanitarian crisis, but there seems to be a block in," said the star.
Jolie continued: "What happens in Iraq and how Iraq settles in the years to come is going to affect the entire Middle East. And a big part of what it's going to affect, how it settles, is how these people are returned and settled into their homes and their community and brought back together and whether they can live together and what their communities look like."
She added: "It's in our best interest to address a humanitarian crisis on this scale because displacement can lead to a lot of instability and aggression."
Jolie is no stranger to the country. In August 2007, she met some of the 1,200 Iraqis stranded on the border between Iraq and Syria and appealed for more international support for those affected by the Iraq conflict.
During that tour, Jolie left UNHCR officials to visit privately with US and other multinational forces based in the area.
The following month, she launched a $150m appeal by UNICEF, the UN's fund for children, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to help educate 1m children affected by the war.
