Safety paramount to ensure UN staff’s return, says Annan

By David Cronin

Date: 22/01/04

THE conditions for a return of UN staff to Iraq will be high on Kofi Annan's agenda when the secretary-general visits the main EU institutions in Brussels next week (28-29 January).

Both native Iraqis and US occupying force have urged the UN to send its staff back to the country to help end the dispute between the Shia majority and US administration over returning power to the Iraqi people. Major demonstrations have taken place in Baghdad this week by Shia muslims angered by America's refusal to countenance an early general election.

While Annan has indicated he is in favour of a return, he is also emphasizing that safety must be paramount. The UN decided to withdraw its 600 foreign staff from Iraq, following the bomb attack last August on its Baghdad headquarters, which left its envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others dead.

A team of UN security personnel is due to visit Iraq to assess the situation on the ground this weekend. But UN sources say the widespread support for a UN return and assurances by Paul Bremer, the top US official in Iraq, that maximum protection would be offered indicate that Annan will probably agree to his staff resuming work there.

During his meetings with the European Commission and High Representative for Foreign Affairs Javier Solana, Annan is also expected to discuss a possible EU role in peacekeeping in Sudan.

The UN is examining different scenarios for deploying international troops following the conclusion of an accord currently under negotiation between the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Army, aimed at halting a two-decade civil war. "The EU as an organization has a role to play [in peacekeeping]," remarked an official in the UN's New York headquarters. "Exactly what role is yet to be determined."

Sudan will be just one of several African-related issues that Annan, originally from Ghana, wishes to raise in Brussels. His spokesman Fred Eckhardt said he will be pushing the EU to deliver on the pledge agreed by all its member states to raises their development aid to poor countries to 0.7% from a present average of 0.3%.

Such increases are considered essential to meet the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) on tackling abject poverty, which, according to Eckhardt, have "got off to a halting start".

This view was backed by a joint report from the World Bank and World Health Organization earlier this month, focusing on the MDG objectives of halting the spread of AIDS, reducing the proportion of women who die during childbirth by two-thirds, and increasing access to clean water and essential medicines by 2015. The report bemoaned a lack of leadership on the part of the industrialized world on ensuring the goals are actually achieved.

Annan will push for the EU to alter its agricultural subsidies regime, blamed for undermining the livelihoods of farmers in poor countries by flooding their markets with cheaper produce. He will also seek a higher EU contribution to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Meanwhile, Annan is expected to discuss how a fresh impetus can be injected into efforts to reunite Cyprus, when he meets Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the World Economic Forum in Davos this weekend.

• The European Parliament is to present the Sakharov Prize, for promoting human rights, to Annan next Thursday. Accompanying the secretary-general will be relatives of the UN staff killed and wounded in the Baghdad blast last August.

Preview of the issues to be discussed during a visit by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to the EU, Brussels, 28-29 January 2004.

http://www.eeas.europa.eu/organisations/un/index_en.htm http://www.eeas.europa.eu/organisations/un/index_en.htm

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