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UN and aid agencies cut and run
Surprise, surprise...The United Nations pulled staff out of Baghdad on Thursday and international aid agencies debated whether they could continue operating in the face of a wave of suicide bomb attacks and persistent lawlessness. A U.N. spokeswoman in Geneva said foreign staff in Baghdad were leaving Iraq for talks on security, following Mondayâs bomb attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross which killed 12 people including two ICRC guards. "We have asked Baghdad staff to come out temporarily for consultations with people from headquarters on the future of our operation," spokeswoman Marie Heuze said. She said the talks would focus on the security arrangements that "we would need to take to operate in Iraq." Most foreign staff had already been pulled out following a suicide truck bomb attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August which killed 22 people, including head of mission Sergio Vieira de Mello. Since then, U.N. programs have been run mostly by Iraqi staff. Iraqâs police chief appealed to foreign aid agencies not to evacuate despite the dangers of working in Iraq. "I send a message to the humanitarian agencies that work in Iraq to keep up their work," Ahmad Ibrahim told reporters. "Donât cave in to these criminal acts." A U.N. spokesman in New York said there were about 60 international staff in Iraq, with most of them in the north and about a dozen in Baghdad. Staff in the north were not being withdrawn, the world body said. The ICRC announced on Wednesday it was pulling out some foreign staff following Mondayâs bombing but would not cease operating in the country. Spokeswoman Nada Doumani said on Thursday foreign Red Cross officials in Iraq would hold talks outside the country at the weekend to discuss how to reduce staff. But she insisted that there would be no general evacuation from Iraq. "We have seen plenty of signs of solidarity since the bombing," Doumani said. "Families of detainees, contractors and hospitals that we work with have been coming to our headquarters to plead with us to stay in Iraq." Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-10-30 |
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