The actress said there needs to be a more coherent plan as the more than 2 million internally displaced Iraqis begin to trickle back to their homes amid a recent lull in violence that had threatened to spark a civil war in the country.

"There's lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment and there are a lot of pieces that need to be put together," Jolie said in an interview with CNN.

"What happens in Iraq and how Iraq settles in the years to come is going to affect the entire Middle East," she added. "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."

Jolie had a 30-minute meeting with the top U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus and Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state for global affairs, to discuss issues related to displaced people and humanitarian relief.

Her itinerary also included meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iraqi migration officials, as well as with U.N. officials, Iraqi employees of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and internally displaced people, the embassy said.

"I am concerned as a humanitarian, of course, but I am also concerned as an American about the desperation and aggression that can come from years of neglect and displacement," an embassy statement quoted Jolie as saying.

AP Television News footage also showed the Academy Award-winning actress mingling with American troops during lunch at a dining facility in the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the embassy and Iraqi government offices in central Baghdad.

"I was glad to have the opportunity to come to Baghdad and thank them face-to-face," Jolie was quoted as saying.

The actress last traveled to Iraq in August, when she saw firsthand the plight of conflict refugees stranded in the blazing desert near the Syrian-Iraqi border.

The actress has worked with UNHCR since early 2001. In May, a foundation set up by Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt donated US$1 million to help those affected by the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region and neighboring Chad.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion - 2 million who have fled to mostly neighboring countries and 2.2 million who vacated their homes but remained displaced by the sectarian violence that had pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

Thousands have returned home in recent months, largely because they had run out of money and could not find work or legal status in the overwhelmed neighboring countries, others after hearing reports of declining violence with an influx of U.S. troops and a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq.

But U.N. and U.S. officials have warned a massive influx of returns could cause new tensions as Sunnis and Shiites come home to houses occupied by members of rival sects and the religious character of many neighborhoods in Baghdad changed during the violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

A new joint report from the International Organization for Migration and the Ministry of Displaced and Migrants indicates that 31 percent of the more than 2 million internally displaced Iraqis claim that someone has occupied their home.

The problem is compounded by weakness in Iraq's legal system: Dana Graber Ladek, an Iraq displacement specialist at the International Organization for Migration, said no effective legal mechanism exists for people to reclaim ownership of their home.

"We have this gap in terms of what are the legal avenues Iraqis can take post-April 2003 and it is really only the local courts, which are not a reliable means of solving the problems," Ladek told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "At the moment there isn't the legal structure needed to solve this problem."

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