LONDON -- Everyone is now looking to the United Nations to step into Iraq and somehow stabilize the situation as the country enters its most critical postwar stage. But is the U.N. capable of performing this role and willing to do so?
If there is hesitation at U.N. headquarters in New York it is entirely understandable. The last U.N. chief official in Iraq, the late Sergio Vieira de Mello, was murdered by a bomb in August 2003; most of the nongovernmental agencies, such as Oxfam and the Red Cross, are now leaving Iraq; and in the current frenzied atmosphere it seems that U.N. personnel are widely regarded as agents of the U.S.-led coalition and just as much enemies of the Iraqi people as the Americans.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has been named by Shiite extremists as a target for assassination, along with Paul Bremer and other prominent members of the provisional administration. How could the U.N. send its officials and workers back into this sinister maelstrom? And who would volunteer to go?