UN probe won't assign blame for any Algiers lapses
Reuters
February 28, 2008
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A panel reviewing security at U.N. facilities worldwide is not aiming to assign blame for any security lapses ahead of bomb attacks in Algiers that killed 17 U.N. staff, the panel's head said Thursday.
Veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who is chairing the six-member group, said he would try to help U.N. member states understand that some militants no longer saw the United Nations as neutral and that heightened security was essential.
"I think there are quite a lot of people who do not make a secret that they consider that the U.N. has become their enemy and is therefore a legitimate target," Brahimi, 74, said.
"Who these people are, of course, I don't know," he told a news conference. "I think the United Nations has been put on notice that their flag is not anymore a protection."
One of his tasks as chairman of the review panel will be to look into the security conditions at the U.N. compound in Algiers prior to the Dec. 11 bomb attacks that killed at least 41 people, 17 of them U.N. staff.
A group called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the Algiers attacks.
Kemal Dervis, head of the U.N. Development Program, the U.N. agency that lost the most staff in the Algiers bombing, has said Algeria had failed to act on a U.N. request to block off the street in Algiers where the U.N. offices were located.
In January media reports quoted the widow of the former head of U.N. security in Algiers, Babacar Ndiaye of Senegal, as saying her husband, who died in the attack, had pleaded with U.N. management to step up security but had been ignored.
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Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2254 Fax: 202-228-3796
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