Protect Christians, Iraqi legislator says

BAGHDAD — A Christian lawmaker called on Iraq’s government Tuesday to better protect its dwindling Christian community, lambasting the nations that have offered asylum to the Christians as meddling in Iraq’s problems.

The comments by lawmaker Younadem Kana, from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, come after a spate of violent attacks on Iraqi Christians - including a Catholic church attack last month that killed 68 people.

Officials in France and Germany have offered asylum to Iraq’s Christians, an estimated 1 million of whom have already left their homeland since 2003. More than a third of the 53,700 Iraqis who have been given asylum in the U.S. since 2007 are Christian, according to theU.S. Embassy in Baghdad, even though they make up only an estimated 5 percent of the population.