GENEVA (AP) – The United Nations refugee agency yesterday criticised a pledge by Britain’s Conservative Party to pull out of a five-decade-old global asylum accord if it wins the country’s upcoming election.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for UN high commissioner for refugees, said Conservative leader Michael Howard’s promise to withdraw Britain from the 1951 Geneva convention was “alarming,” and that the consequences “would be extremely counterproductive.”

Under the accord, countries are meant to provide asylum for refugees.

“We are very concerned that any attempt to undermine the convention in this way might have a really damaging effect on the whole worldwide system of asylum,” Colville told reporters. “It could produce a domino effect – it would send an extraordinary message to developing countries that host hundreds of thousands of refugees on their soil.”

Colville cited the case of Chad, one of the world’s poorest countries, which is hosting 200,000 refugees mostly from neighbouring Sudan’s conflict-ravaged Darfur region.

If such nations followed the British lead, it would lead to “more irregular movement and less management” of refugee numbers, Colville said.

“There are 145 states that have signed the 1951 Refugee Convention,” said Colville. “No state has ever withdrawn from it to date.”