UN ready to broaden its role in Iraq

“This is a responsibility I take very seriously.” Ban announced that the UN would increase its staff in Iraq, and open a “support office” in Baghdad to help arrange dialogue between groups that have traditionally not spoken directly to each other, such as some insurgent groups, religious leaders and the government. “It is my belief that security and stability in Iraq will not be obtained through military means alone. There needs to be dialogue, national reconciliation and reduced sectarian tensions.”

Maliki pledged that the Iraqi government would protect UN workers. “The security situation has begun to develop tremendously, and the Baghdad of today is different from the Baghdad of yesterday,” Maliki said. Concerns about security have been the main obstacle for the UN re-establishing a significant presence in Iraq. The UN had been instrumental in helping Iraq establish an interim government, prepare a constitution and hold elections. In 2003, however, a suicide bomb attack on the UN’s Baghdad headquarters killed 22 staff members and led the UN to base most of its staff for Iraq in Kuwait and Jordan.

Ban said there are now 65 UN staffers in the country — those in Baghdad are based in the secure Green Zone –and he would add personnel soon in Erbil and Basra. The UN withdrew its staff in Basra earlier this year when Britain reduced its forces. In response to a question about a videotape that reportedly shows that private Blackwater security guards fired without provocation on civilians, Maliki merely said that Iraqi and American investigators were looking into it. “We have asked the Americans to deal with the investigation through an investigative committee to see whether there is a video of that incident,” he said. A senior Iraqi official in Baghdad, Maj Gen Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said on Saturday that a videotape showed that the bodyguards protecting US diplomats fired first in the September 16 incident that killed 11 and said the company had been implicated in six other incidents in the last seven months, according to The Associated Press.