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U.N. Pulls Observers From South Iraq
The United Nations has pulled its international observers out of four southern Iraqi governorates for security reasons, George Somerwill, the U.N. spokesman for the oil-for-food program in Iraq said Sunday.
Somerwill did not elaborate but stressed that the withdrawal was not triggered by any specific incident.
The pullout came less than three weeks after an armed Iraqi opened fire at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) office in Baghdad, killing two people and wounding seven.
The withdrawn U.N. observers include monitors of food distribution under the oil-for-food program as well as those affiliated with the Rome-based FAO and other U.N. agencies.
Somerwill said the monitoring in the south would be done by local staff for the time being and the international staff would continue their work in the central and northern parts of the country.
Some 150 U.N. observers had worked in Iraq to monitor the distribution of food, medicine and other humanitarian goods bought under the oil-for-food program, which, effective in November 1996, allows Iraq to sell oil every six months to buy humanitarian goods for its 22 million people reeling under U.N.sanctions imposed for Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
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