18 March 2003
U.N. Steps Up Planning to Aid Iraqi Civilians
(Annan "focusing ahead rather than looking back") (670) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- As more than 300 U.N. staff are evacuated from Iraq, U.N. officials at headquarters in New York March 18 stepped up contingency planning for how the international organization, best known for its effectiveness in providing humanitarian assistance, can help after expected military action ends. "The United Nations will find a way to resume its humanitarian activities and help the Iraq people and do whatever it can to provide assistance and support," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said. Secretary General Kofi Annan is "focusing ahead rather than looking back," Eckhard said. "The first ones we'd like to bring back into the country are humanitarian staff," Eckhard said during his daily press briefing. The United Nations has administered the Oil-for-Food program under which a major portion of the proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil have been used to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people since the 1991 Gulf War. With the withdrawal of U.N. personnel, that program has been "temporarily suspended," Eckhard said, but the network is in place to deliver a massive amount of humanitarian assistance and has a great deal of supplies at various stages on its way to Iraq. Once hostilities are over, getting U.N. staff back into Iraq to distribute the material in the pipeline "we think would be the fastest and best way to distribute assistance to Iraq people ... as a kind of war relief fund," the spokesman said. "That is the first step to expect." The Security Council controls the mandates for not only the Oil-for-Food program but the U.N. peacekeepers on the Iraq-Kuwait border and the weapons inspectors. For the U.N. to return to Iraq the council will have to adjust the existing mandates to meet the new needs and circumstances in Iraq, Eckhard said. Peacekeepers of the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (UNIKOM) who were deployed on the Iraq-Kuwait border "are being sent home in two stages," he said. "We would have to see in the future if there is need to patrol the border. That would be a matter for the Security Council to decide." Hans Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), said at a press conference March 18 that the withdrawal of the weapons inspectors "is a rather sad moment" but it is tempered by the fact that all 134 weapons inspectors are safely in Cyprus. Blix said that over the next few weeks the inspectors will finish the analysis of the many letters UNMOVIC received from Iraq on outstanding weapons issues, especially anthrax and VX; complete reports on the work done in the past weeks; and "await to see what the Security Council thinks we should do." Blix said that there was a "frantic" response from Iraq in the last few weeks in terms of letters to UNMOVIC. "We have been showered by letters about R-400 bombs or about investigations of anthrax in the ground and that has to be analyzed in a sober manner," he said. So far, the analyses "show not much new information," Blix said. The chief weapons inspectors said there has been no indication that the United States would be interested in having U.N. assistance in analyzing any weapons of mass destruction materials allied troops might find in Iraq. "We are very interested to see what will come out when they have people who are free to speak, when they can go anywhere, and examine the kind of intelligence they had," he said of the U.S. and its allies. Reviewing his tenure as chief weapons inspector, Blix said that he "could never understand why Iraq needed chemical and biological weapons," and found it "puzzling" why Iraq did not come forward with all its data in 1991 instead of suffering for 10 years with sanctions. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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