MARCH 19, 2003 - UN-HABITAT has
evacuated the entire contingent of its international staff from Iraq in
conformity with a decision by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to withdraw
United Nations staff from Iraq following the failure of efforts to achieve
united action in the Security Council aimed at ridding the country of weapons
of mass destruction.
The last member of the 27-strong UN-HABITAT
team left on Tuesday, said Dorothee von Brentano, the agency's Iraq Programme
Coordinator. She said national staff officers would remain in the country
to help manage UN-HABITAT's US $600 million operation financed by the Oil-for-Food
agreement between the government of Iraq and the United Nations.
As of December 2002, the programme has delivered 19,051 homes, 685 schools, 127 health centres, 147 agricultural and social buildings, 2800 km of roads and bridges, and 853 km of water and sanitation infrastructure.
In New York on Monday 17 March, Mr. Annan said in a statement to reporters after he informed a closed-door meeting of the Security Council: "I have just informed the Council that we will withdraw the UNMOVIC and atomic agency inspectors, we will withdraw the UN humanitarian workers, we will withdraw the UNIKOM troops on the Iraq-Kuwaiti border who are also not able to operate."
The Secretary-General said US authorities had informed him, as well as the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), "that it would be prudent not to leave our staff in the region."
Mr. Annan said the implication of these withdrawals meant that several UN mandates like the humanitarian oil-for-food programme would be suspended because there would no inspectors to monitor the selling of oil and the distribution of food required by such programmes.