UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 (AFP) - One year after the deadly bombing of its Baghdad offices, the United Nations has made a limited and cautious return to Iraq, but security remains a critical concern.
Twenty-two people were killed in last year's August 19 attack, the deadliest such incident in UN history and a turning point that has forced the world body to reassess how it operates across the globe.
"For the foreseeable future, the United Nations will remain a high-value, high-impact target for attack in Iraq," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a report to the Security Council earlier this month.
"Security will remain the primary obstacle and constraint," he said.
The attack, which killed top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, was followed by another one month later as well as others on humanitarian agencies. Annan pulled all international UN staff out in October.
New envoy Ashraf Jehangir Qazi arrived in Baghdad last Friday with a small team that is supposed to be protected by a dedicated multinational force as spelled out in an earlier Security Council resolution.
But not even a single soldier has yet been offered for their protection, and a UN official told AFP on Wednesday there was still no concrete progress in getting countries to offer troops.
In his report, Annan said the United Nations "lacks the integral resources for the early discharge of its own security responsibilities in Iraq," and was relying on US-led international troops as well as on Iraqi security forces.
Despite the security problems, however, Qazi and the UN team have some key tasks on their agenda, including helping to prepare for elections that would put a new government in place by the end of January
But the decision to return personnel to Iraq has drawn the ire of the UN staff union.
"We are dismayed because the secretary general had promised that such failures would not be repeated, but the solutions to security questions have not been formulated yet," said Guy Candusso, a union vice-president.
"We don't even have a full-time security coordinator," Candusso told AFP. "Between external and internal factors, there is a problem."
UN security chief Tun Myat resigned after an enquiry found that security at the Baghdad mission was "dysfunctional" and had likely added to the casualty toll in the attack.
In addition to 22 dead, more than 100 people were wounded. A new security coordinator has not yet been named.
One report also found that the United Nations had underestimated the anger many Iraqis felt at the world body over its role in the international sanctions regime slapped on the country while Saddam Hussein was in power.