UN offers to increase number of its staffers in Baghdad

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations has offered to bolster its presence in Baghdad for the first time in more than three years, laying the groundwork for a more ambitious role in mediating the country's sectarian disputes.

The move comes three weeks after President Bush delivered his second personal appeal to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to help resolve some of Iraq's intractable religious and ethnic conflicts. The top UN political adviser, B. Lynn Pascoe, told the Security Council yesterday that the United Nations would be prepared to increase the size of its mission in Baghdad by nearly 50 percent, raising the ceiling from 65 to as many as 95 international staffers in the coming months.

The United Nations is also seeking $130 million in funds to build a heavily reinforced compound in Baghdad to house its growing mission.

Ban has been committed to do more in Iraq than his predecessor, Kofi Annan, who vigorously opposed the US invasion of Iraq. But Ban has been constrained by the worsening violence and resistance among some UN officials who fear inheriting some of the responsibilities in Iraq.

"There is an effort by the United States to try to reinternationalize the Iraq venture," said Qubad Talabani, a Kurdish representative and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. "I think there would be widespread opposition to the UN freelancing in Iraq. Any involvement by the UN has to be in very close coordination with the Iraqi government."

The United States and Britain are pressing for a vote tomorrow on a resolution to define the United Nations' new tasks. It calls on the organization to promote talks on national reconciliation and to galvanize regional and international support for Iraq. The resolution would also empower the United Nations to help resolve a number of territorial disputes.

"What is driving the conflict now is largely disagreement among the different Iraqi groups on political, economic distribution of power and to unhelpful regional interference," said Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the United Nations. "The UN needs to play a bigger role that can help the Iraqis overcome these difficulties. One of the advantages of the UN is that it can reach out to many groups and some groups that do not want to talk to other external players," including the United States and Britain.

Among the frontrunners to lead the mission to Iraq are a former deputy UN envoy in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, of Sweden, and Jean Arnault, a French diplomat who ran UN operations in Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Georgia.

But Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, has urged Ban to appoint Romania's former ambassador to Iraq, Radu Onofrei. Another candidate is Ghassan Salame, a former Lebanese culture minister, who advised Annan on Iraq.

The Bush administration's overtures to the United Nations contrast with its previous disdain for the organization. On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, President Bush predicted that the United Nations would meet the fate of the defunct League of Nations if it failed to confront Iraq's then-president, Saddam Hussein. And the Pentagon sought to exclude the United Nations from the reconstruction efforts.

In the months following Hussein's fall, however, the Bush administration turned to the Security Council to secure international endorsement for its occupation of Iraq. UN officials have helped establish a transitional government, organize elections and negotiate a constitution. But the United Nations has become a spectator as the country slid deeper into chaos.

The debate is unfolding here as the drawdown of British troops in southern Iraq has already forced the withdrawal of UN staff from Basra, one of three UN headquarters in the country. Pascoe said that a spike in suicide bombings in Irbil, where the United Nations has a small mission, makes it difficult to expand operations there now.

Many UN staffers harbor resentment against the United States over the August 2003, suicide truck bombing in Baghdad that killed 22 UN workers, including special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, who were working there even though the UN opposed US action in Iraq.