The UN refugee agency will urge Muslim nations to boost multilateral cooperation to support the Islamic world’s nine million refugees at a meeting in Pakistan next month, said a senior official. Wider collaboration would help the UNHCR deal with crises such as the Lebanon war, the Pakistan earthquake and the Asian tsunami, said Indrika Ratwatte, the UNHCR assistant representative in Pakistan. The conference of ministers from the 57-state Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is being jointly convened by the UNHCR from November 27 to 29 in Islamabad. “Refugees and displacement issues in the OIC region are not going to go away. It is going to require a strategy,” said Ratwatte. “I think all the participants would like to see a platform to foster some multilateral cooperation,” he added. The conference will be the first held by the OIC to focus exclusively on the problem of refugees in the Muslim world.