Iraq is still too dangerous to reopen the UN office in Baghdad, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said after appointing a replacement for the top envoy to Iraq, who was killed in an August suicide bombing along with 21 other people.
Most UN functions in Iraq will operate from a new regional base in Nicosia, Cyprus, with about 40 international staffers in place there by early next year. There will be a smaller UN office in Amman, Jordan, Annan said in a 26-page report given Wednesday to the Security Council.
The decision nettled US officials, who urged Annan to send international UN staffers back into Iraq as soon as possible.
Annan named Ross Mountain as his interim envoy to Iraq. Mountain, a New Zealander, is currently the UN assistant emergency relief coordinator and director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva.
Annan offered Iraq help from the UN in running an election and creating a constitution after the occupation by the US, Britain and other nations in the coalition ended.
But, he added, "The dangers posed by insurgents, whose attacks have been growing in sophistication and strength over the past months, are real.
"I cannot afford to compromise the security of our international and national staff," he said.
"In taking the difficult decisions that lie ahead, I shall be asking myself questions such as whether the substance of the role allocated to the United Nations is proportionate to the risks we are being asked to take, whether the political process is fully inclusive and transparent and whether the humanitarian tasks in question are truly life-saving, or not."
The UN pulled its international staff out of Iraq after the Aug. 19 bombing, which killed 22 people including top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. In September, a suicide car-bomber was halted at a checkpoint outside the UN offices, killing himself and an Iraqi guard and wounding 19 passers-by.
Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the US ambassador to the UN, said, "We encourage the secretary-general to continue to think about the return of international staff, because it's hard to play a vital role when the organization is not on the ground inside the country."
His stress on the "vital role" the UN could play underlined the Security Council's unanimously adopted resolutions after the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime calling on the world body to help rebuild the country.
Grenell and US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher both expressed satisfaction with a section of Annan's report that noted "in many areas, including the advancement of basic human rights such as freedom of speech and of political assembly, as well as the provision of basis services and the reconstitution of the local police, very real progress has been made in Iraq in the past few months."
"This progress should not be underestimated; nor should the efforts of the Coalition Provisional Authority and newly emerging Iraqi institutions be overlooked," Annan said.
But the UN chief also predicted "it is likely that Iraq will continue to require assistance, in the form of a substantial military presence, for a number of years to come," which he said should come from "a broad range of other countries" beside the current US and British-led occupation force to reassure the Iraqis.
Mountain will temporarily take over Vieira de Mello's duties until a permanent replacement in named, probably early next year. For more than a decade, Mountain has been in the forefront of UN relief operations, traveling to war zones in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
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