UN global security chief put on leave over Iraq
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UNITED NATIONS, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The United Nations has put its head of security on leave after an independent panel blamed senior officials for sloppy safety precautions before the Aug. 19 Baghdad bombing that killed 22 people, diplomats said. Later this week Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to appoint a team of experts to assess who was to blame for the lapses and suggest how to overhaul the system. In the meantime, Tun Myat, a lawyer from Myanmar, is to go on leave until the probe is completed, the envoys said on Monday. Myat, 61, joined the United Nations in 1979 and was the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq before being in charge of global security in July 2002. Annan, in a letter to U.N. staff on Friday, pledged to address "systematic failures" in the world body's security system to ensure that they were not repeated "in Iraq or elsewhere." He was responding to a chilling report on Oct. 22 from an independent panel, headed by Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, who probed the August suicide bombing of the U.N. offices in Baghdad that killed 22 staff members and visitors. The panel's report said the U.N. security system was so "dysfunctional" and "sloppy" that it probably cost lives. Deficiencies included a lack of knowing how many foreign staff were in Iraq, a delay until this day of installing shatter-proof glass and a rejection of U.S. military protection without making alternate arrangements. "We are going through the details trying to find out exactly who did what and we are going to make some changes," Annan said on Monday, adding that "quite a lot" of tightening of security had been done in Baghdad and around the world. Annan also ordered a "strategic reorganization" of security management to be led by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, herself faulted in the Ahtisaari report for heading a group that blurred the chain of command on security. After the bombing, Annan drastically reduced staff in Iraq and last Thursday decided to withdraw the last 20 from Baghdad, at least temporarily, following a week of violence. "In principle, they should all be out or on their way out," he said on Monday. The staff will be in Cyprus for meetings with security officials before a decision is made on whether to return.
