0
KUWAIT, March 8: UN military observers on the Iraq-Kuwait border said on Saturday they were withdrawing civilian staff to Kuwait City for their own safety in view of a possible US invasion of Iraq.
“We are doing this as a protective measure for their safety in view of the situation,” said Daljeet Bagga, spokesman of the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (UNIKOM).
He said UNIKOM had begun removing on Saturday some of its 230 civilian UN staff from their residential quarters in the demilitarised zone that runs the length of the 200-km border.
He said more of them would go on Sunday.
The UNIKOM’s 195 observers and its 775-strong Bangladeshi military support units would stay in place, he said.
UN investigators reported on Friday that a commercial contractor was building new gates in a fence separating the two countries, a barrier US forces would have to cross if they invade Iraq from the Gulf state.
UNIKOM, which monitors the 12-year-old demilitarised border zone said the building of the seven gates — wide enough to accommodate a tank — followed recent sightings of US soldiers entering the Kuwaiti side of the zone.
The project triggered speculation the work was being carried out in preparation for war. Tens of thousands of US and British troops are in Kuwait preparing for possible air and ground attacks on Iraq.
SWISS FM: The United Nations, and not the United States, should be responsible for administering Iraq following a war which would oust President Saddam Hussein, Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey said in an interview published on Saturday.
“We have urgently stressed that after a military operation, the UN must assume control of Iraq,” she told the German-language Swiss daily Basler Zeitung.
“It is imperative that one sole state, like the United States, does not occupy a country and administer it at its own discretion and according to its own interests.”
US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday that a US plan for the post-war reconstruction of Iraq envisaged splitting the oil-rich Arab state into three sectors, which would be controlled by two retired US generals and a former US ambassador.
Barbara Bodine, a former US ambassador to Yemen, would be named as the interim civil administrator of the Baghdad central region, and the two generals would oversee the north and south of the country, the officials said.
Calmy-Rey said it was up to the United Nations to decide on both the administration of a post-war Iraq and also the necessity for any such war in the first place and on the way it should be conducted.
Switzerland supported the continuation of “reinforced” UN inspections in Iraq to determine whether it was harboring weapons of mass destruction, she said.
“If, in a second phase, the use of force becomes necessary, it will be up to the United Nations to define the objectives and means — and not individual states who absolutely do not have that mandate,” she stressed.
Switzerland has asked that any UN resolution on the subject “take into account humanitarian aspects and the protection of threatened populations”, Calmy-Rey said.
She said she had asked her French counterpart Dominique de Villepin, whose country has a permanent seat on the Security Council, to propose these requests if the Council voted on a new resolution on Iraq.
“Our attitude corresponds to our history, which is that of a neutral country with a long humanitarian tradition,” she said.
Calmy-Rey organized a conference in Geneva two weeks ago dedicated to preparing humanitarian aid and intervention in Iraq in the event of a US-led war.—AFP
