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Top UN envoy for Iraq arrives on first visit, calls for end to fighting in Najaf

13 August 2004 – The top United Nations envoy for Iraq arrived in Baghdad today for his first visit since his appointment last month to oversee what Security Council resolutions have called the world body's vital role in rehabilitating the war-torn country.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative Ashraf Jehangir Qazi immediately went into meetings with the top interim leaders and reiterated calls for a peaceful solution to the fighting currently raging in the holy Shiite Muslim city of Najaf.

Mr. Qazi is to attend the upcoming National Conference of representative Iraqis, which is to choose a body to monitor the work of the interim government. The conference was postponed for two weeks at the end of last month at the suggestion of UN officials to allow time to include more participants.

He reiterated the UN's commitment to help Iraq in the political transition towards a constitutional democracy by the end of 2005 and said the National Conference had to be as "inclusive of the range of Iraqi opinion as possible in order for its outcome to have maximum credibility among the Iraqi people," his spokesman said in a statement.

Accompanied by a small team Mr. Qazi met with Iraqi President Ghazi Al Yawer and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who called for the UN to encourage national dialogue and highlighted the country's need for "UN good offices in both the political and economic fields," spokesman Nejib Friji added.

With regard to the fighting and loss of life in Najaf, Mr. Qazi reiterated Mr. Annan's call "for peaceful settlement, the urgent need to prevent and avoid the loss of human life and respect for international humanitarian law including access for wounded to medical assistance." The need for maintaining an appropriate climate for a successful national conference was also stressed, Mr. Friji said.

Mr. Qazi's arrival follows by a day the Security Council's unanimous renewal for a further year of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), whose tasks include coordinating various humanitarian operations and helping the war-torn country to organize elections by the end of January and draft a new constitution.

Mr. Annan has stressed that staff security remains an overriding constraint for all UN operations in Iraq after he withdrew international staff in the wake of last August's terrorist bomb attack on UN offices in Baghdad that killed his then Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.