UN cuts Iraq staff after second bombing
( 2003-09-26 17:10) (Agencies)
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has ordered more staff cutbacks in Iraq after a second bombing of U.N. headquarters there, even as Russia and other countries called for a greater U.N. role in rebuilding the country.
The reductions, announced Thursday, highlighted the dilemma of trying to internationalize efforts to stabilize Iraq.
"This is not an evacuation, just a further downsizing and the security situation in the country remains under constant review," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Annan's order came after the second bombing outside U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Monday killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded 19 others.
The first bombing, on Aug. 19, killed 22 people at the headquarters. At that time, there were about 300 international staff in Baghdad and another 300 elsewhere in Iraq, and Annan ordered the number reduced to 42 in Baghdad and 44 in the north.
Eckhard said he did not know how many of the 86 remaining staffers would leave for Amman, Jordan. But a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said more than half would depart.
The new cuts were announced as the Security Council debates a new resolution the United States hopes will bring new troops and money to Iraq.
Opponents of the U.S.-led war in Iraq — including France, Germany and Russia — are calling for the United Nations to take over the political transition and are demanding a speedier timetable for the handover of power than the United States has proposed.
The United Nation's humanitarian work should be able to continue, with limited international supervision, using the 4,233 Iraqis working for the United Nations, Eckhard said.
But Annan has indicated that if security is not improved, he might not be able to allow the return of international staff in the numbers needed to oversee more than the minimum humanitarian needs, and a larger U.N. role possibly helping with a new constitution and elections would be out of the question.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who strongly opposed the U.S.-led war, led the calls Thursday for a broadened role for the world body in Iraq.
"Only the direct participation by the United Nations in the rebuilding of Iraq will enable its people themselves to decide their future," Putin said during the third day of the General Assembly's annual ministerial debate.
Putin began and ended his speech by stressing the United Nations' importance and said powerful countries have an obligation to work within it.
"Being a world power means being together with the world community," he said in an obvious allusion to the United States.
Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz also said that the huge task of rebuilding Iraq "should be assisted by the entire international community." Poland was a U.S. ally in the Iraq war.
Sweden's acting foreign minister, Jan Karlsson, said that "the international community needs the legitimacy of the U.N." in Iraq and promised that the bombings of U.N. headquarters "will not make us waver."
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