March 13, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 9, 1424

KUWAIT, March 12: A UN force monitoring the Iraq-Kuwait border said on Wednesday it was temporarily removing some observers from remote parts of a demilitarized zone that US troops would have to cross in any invasion of Iraq.

“Some of the United Nations Military Observers stationed in remote and isolated Patrol and Observation Bases ... on both sides of the demilitarized zone are ... being relocated temporarily to the sector headquarters,” the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission, UNIKOM, said in a statement.

The mission’s observation work was continuing despite what it called contingency arrangements under which nonessential military and civilian UNIKOM staff have left the DMZ in recent days, UN mission spokesman Daljeet Bagga told Reuters.

“Just a partial relocation has taken place. Not all 195 observers have been relocated,” he said, adding that UN observers and civilian staff remained in place on both the Iraqi and Kuwaiti sides of the zone.

He said some 300 to 400 civilians and soldiers, including observers, had been pulled back.

“This was done as a precautionary measure,” Bagga said, declining to elaborate.

UNIKOM, which has about 1,100 soldiers — including 195 observers and a Bangladeshi military support unit — and a civilian support staff of about 230, said equipment not required for duties in the DMZ had been moved to a secure storage facility under an arrangement with Kuwaiti authorities.

Tens of thousands of US and British troops are now in Kuwait preparing for possible air and ground attacks on Iraq to rid it of weapons of mass destruction that Washington and London say Baghdad is hiding. Iraq denies it has any such weapons.

The United Nations set up the zone in 1991 and created UNIKOM to patrol it, shortly after a US-led multinational coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, ending a seven-month occupation.

UN officials have quietly said the peacekeeping force would be withdrawn from the zone shortly before any military action, and US President George W. Bush said last week he would give advance notice of any military action so UN workers in Iraq would have time to leave.—Reuters