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Red Cross cuts foreign staff
30/10/2003 09:58 - (SA)
Baghdad - The International Red Cross said on Wednesday it was cutting back its foreign staff in Iraq, two days after a truck bomb devastated its offices here, but that it was not abandoning the war-torn country.
The Red Cross decision, taken as other aid agencies pondered the future of their operations in Iraq, came as US troop losses since May 1 reached 116, two more than were killed in the original invasion.
Pierre Kraehenbuehl, operations director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, insisted at a press conference in Geneva that "the ICRC is not withdrawing from Iraq".
"We are reducing the number of our international staff and implementing additional measures for the security of our remaining staff," he said at the ICRC headquarters.
"We have no choice but to adapt the way we work in Iraq."
The ICRC has 30 to 40 foreigners and about 700 Iraqi staff in the country, and had already pared down the number of expatriates since a Sri Lankan colleague was shot dead near Baghdad in July.
The ICRC pullout appeared to be deeply troubling to the United States, with Secretary of State Colin Powell appealing directly to the chief of the agency not to pull foreign staff out of Iraq after the bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad on Monday.
That was one of a series of almost simultaneous car bomb attacks around the Iraqi capital that killed 43 people, including two Iraqi ICRC staffers, and wounded more than 200.
But Kraehenbuehl was adamant that despite the "devastating blow", the staunchly neutral agency was making an independent decision on the best course of action.
"Any comment or advice is useful, but we'll definitely be making our own determinations as to the future," he said.
The attack was reminiscent of an August 19 suicide bombing on the UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people, prompting the United Nations to reduce its foreign staff in Iraq.
Kraehenbuehl said the details of a partial rundown were being worked out, and could depend on the degree of risk in different parts of the country.
Aid workers regard the region around the capital Baghdad as the most dangerous area to work in.
The Red Cross decision, taken as other aid agencies pondered the future of their operations in Iraq, came as US troop losses since May 1 reached 116, two more than were killed in the original invasion.
Six car bombings in 48 hours, a rocket attack on the coalition's fortified Baghdad compound, as well as the drive-by shooting of Baghdad's deputy mayor have significantly upped the stakes in the battle for Iraq's future this week.
- AFP
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