UN observers to evacuate

2003-03-17 12:59

Kuwait City - UN observers stationed along Kuwait's border with Iraq ceased all operations and were preparing to evacuate the demilitarised zone (DMZ) later on Monday, a spokesperson said after the United States gave only one more day for diplomacy to resolve the Iraq crisis.

"Our tentative time to leave the DMZ is 16:00 local time (13:00)," Daljeet Bagga of the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (Unikom) said.

Unikom had raised its state of alert to phase four earlier in the day.

"We went to phase four today, which means ceasing all operations" in the DMZ, Bagga said.

Moving to phase five would mean total evacuation of all personnel out of the country to safe havens.

"We're currently assembling in one place and moving to Camp Khor, the alternate command centre" on the Kuwaiti side of the DMZ, he said.

From there, all Unikom staff will entirely evacuate the DMZ and travel in convoy to Kuwait City where they will wait to hear from headquarters in New York, which could order them out of the emirate at any time, Bagga said.

"The United Nations is proceeding to take appropriate measures to ensure the security of its personnel in the DMZ," Bagga added.

"Everyone's busy packing up, there's so many last minute things to be done," he said.

Unikom moved to phase three alert status on March 8 when it started moving non-essential personnel out of the zone and regrouping its observers away from isolated areas as the threat of a US-led war mounted.

Unikom has 1 327 staff, including 195 military observers and 228 local and international civilians.

The DMZ is patrolled by the observers and runs along both sides of the border.

Unikom was set up to monitor the 240km land and maritime border in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, and to ensure no violations occur in the DMZ.

The zone is guarded by an electric fence, three-metre high sand berms, trenches and other barriers as well as being patrolled by the United Nations.

US forces are officially banned from entering the DMZ, but earlier this month, Unikom reported seven wide gaps in the fence, large enough for any vehicle to pass through, and said it had seen people suspected of being US troops on the Kuwaiti side of the DMZ beforehand.

Kuwait has said it maintained the right to make gates in the fence.

A security source said on Monday that more gaps were seen in the fence, but that they had been "rejoined in places, apparently to make it easier, when the time comes, to facilitate entry" into Iraq.

About 140 000 US troops are now stationed in the northern Kuwaiti desert as the United States threatens to launch a massive military campaign against Iraq over its alleged weapons of mass destruction.

US President George W Bush on Sunday gave the United Nations a 24-hour ultimatum to back war with Iraq, after holding an emergency summit with key allies British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in Portugal's Azores Islands.

- AFX