State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Washington is holding Iraq to previous assurances that the People's Mujahedeen will be treated humanely and do not end up in a country where they could be harmed.

The People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), a group otherwise known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, was founded in 1965 in opposition to the Shah of Iran and subsequently fought the clerical regime that toppled him in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced plans Thursday to move the more than 3,000 members of the group living at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border to Neqrat al-Salman, a camp in the desert south of Baghdad.

Supporters of the group say the move will occur Tuesday.

Maliki said the move, which the Mujahedeen criticizes as doing the bidding of the Iranian regime, is "a step on the way of taking them out of the country."

Maliki did not indicate where the dissidents would go.

When asked about concerns over the camp's fate, Kelly told reporters that an Iraqi police raid that left 11 residents of Camp Ashraf dead in July "is in the back of everybody's mind" as events unfold.

"What we would do, first and foremost, is to urge the Iraqi authorities to conduct any such relocation with the residents of Camp Ashraf, that it be done in a lawful and humane way," Kelly said, adding the initiative was entirely planned by the Iraqis.

"The government of Iraq has assured us that they would not deport any of these citizens to any country where they would be having a well-grounded fear of being treated inhumanely."

Noting that Washington was diplomatically engaged with Baghdad on the matter, Kelly added: "We're making it clear that we would expect... that the residents of Camp Ashraf to be treated well and with respect."

Members of the group and their families have lived at the camp, a refugee base in Diyala province north of the Iraqi capital, for more than 20 years.

Late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allowed some 3,500 members and their families to live at Camp Ashraf as part of a policy of accommodating the Iranian armed opposition at Iraqi bases during his 1980-1988 war with Iran.

Following the US-led invasion of 2003, American forces disarmed the Mujahedeen at Ashraf and placed the residents under protection.

The London-based Amnesty International issued a statement Friday on its website saying the Iraqi authorities "must not forcibly relocate" the Iranian dissidents.

"Some may also be at risk of being forcibly returned to Iran," the human rights group said.

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