UN probe won't assign blame for any Algiers lapses
28 Feb 2008 18:25:43 GMT Source: Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - A panel reviewing security at U.N. facilities worldwide is not aiming to assign blame for any security lapses ahead of bomb attacks in Algiers that killed 17 U.N. staff, the panel's head said on Thursday. Veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who is chairing the six-member group, said he would try to help U.N. member states understand that some militants no longer saw the United Nations as neutral and that heightened security was essential. "I think there are quite a lot of people who do not make a secret that they consider that the U.N. has become their enemy and is therefore a legitimate target," Brahimi, 74, said. "Who these people are, of course, I don't know," he told a news conference. "I think the United Nations has been put on notice that their flag is not anymore a protection." One of his tasks as chairman of the review panel will be to look into the security conditions at the U.N. compound in Algiers prior to the Dec. 11 bomb attacks that killed at least 41 people, 17 of them U.N. staff. A group called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the Algiers attacks. Kemal Dervis, head of the U.N. Development Program, the U.N. agency that lost the most staff in the Algiers bombing, has said Algeria had failed to act on a U.N. request to block off the street in Algiers where the U.N. offices were located. In January media reports quoted the widow of the former head of U.N. security in Algiers, Babacar Ndiaye of Senegal, as saying her husband, who died in the attack, had pleaded with U.N. management to step up security but had been ignored. Brahimi said he would look closely at any security lapses ahead of the bombing but would not try to determine who at the United Nations or in the Algerian government may have been personally responsible for them. NO SHERLOCK HOLMES Brahimi insisted he was conducting a security review and not a full-scale investigation. "I don't like the word investigation because it makes it look like I'm going to be a policeman," he said. "I'm not Sherlock Holmes. I don't know how to do those things." The Algerian government had initially opposed the U.N. panel, but Brahimi said this was because Algeria had not been consulted when the creation of the panel was first announced in January. This "misunderstanding" has been cleared up, he said. Brahimi's words likely will disappoint the United Nations Staff Union, which represents U.N. employees and has criticized U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for choosing Brahimi without consulting it. The union said this week in a letter to Ban that it wanted a full investigation of security ahead of the Algiers bombing and expressed disappointment that he appeared "to have no interest in seeking a determination of accountability." Last year was one of the deadliest ever for U.N. personnel, with 42 civilian staff and peacekeeping troops killed in acts of violence, the union has said. In 2003 a bomb attack at the U.N. offices in Baghdad killed 22 people including mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello. (Editing by Xavier Briand)
A mourner cries during the funeral of Shihab al-Timimi, the head of the Iraqi journalists' union, in Baghdad February 28, 2008. Tamimi, the head of Iraq's biggest journalist organisation, died on ...
