The business of the UN came to a standstill for 30 minutes as 2,000 UN staff, joined by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Security Council ambassadors, marched in silent tribute to their fallen colleagues.
Another 3,000 staff members, many in tears and carrying white roses, marched earlier on Tuesday in Geneva to remember those who died in last week's bombing of the world body's Baghdad headquarters.
Tributes at the two largest UN offices and at smaller UN missions around the world put a spotlight on the close ties among UN staff and the anger of many members that more wasn't done to protect the 23 people who died, including top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The UN Staff Union, which organized the silent marches, demanded "a full and independent investigation to determine why adequate security was not in place at United Nations headquarters in Baghdad."
The union's standing committee on security issued a statement after the march demanding to know why so many UN personnel were in Baghdad despite a high-level security alert. It again called on Annan to suspend all UN operations in Iraq and withdraw staff "until such time as measures are taken to improve security."
Annan, wearing a black suit and tie, walked alongside Catherine Bertini, the UN's chief financial officer, around the traffic circle in front of the 39-story Secretariat Building.
The head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, and the head of its political affairs department, Kieran Prendergast, also joined the march.
Annan has said repeatedly that the United Nations won't leave Iraq because of the attack, which killed 19 UN staff -- including 8 Iraqis -- and wounded over 160 others, some seriously.
But the secretary-general said he was reassessing security issues, and Prendergast indicated that a much wider reappraisal is under way.
"It can't be business as usual," Prendergast told The Associated Press, "and we are going to have to assess very thoroughly and very carefully and in no great rush what are the full implications for the United Nations of our future activities and profile in Iraq."
His special assistant, Richard Hooper, who was on special assignment working with Vieira de Mello, was among the victims. "He was doing what he wanted to do which I suppose is some very, very slight consolation but not much," Prendergast said.
For Agnes Marcaillou of France, a close friend of Vieira de Mello and his chief of staff Nadia Younes, who was also killed, the bombing "was my 9/11."
"When one of us is hurt, the whole family is affected, and we are reliving a second time as UN what 9/11 put us through as New Yorkers," said Marcaillou, who works in the Department of Disarmament Affairs.
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