|
UN election team for Iraq
27/01/2004 11:17 - (SA)
Paris - The United Nations is to send a mission to Iraq to study whether fair and credible elections can be held before the planned handover of sovereignty at the end of June, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday.
"I have come to the conclusion that the UN can play a constructive role in helping to find a way out from the current impasse," Annan said in a statement in Paris.
"As soon as I have been persuaded that the coalition's provisional authority will take adequate measures to assure security, I will send a mission to Iraq as I have been requested," he said.
The United Nations pulled its non-Iraqi staff out of Iraq in October because of the deteriorating security situation, following an August 19 attack on the UN's Baghdad headquarters which killed Annan's top envoy and 21 others.
At a meeting in New York last week, the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and US authorities asked Annan to send a team of experts to Iraq to see if elections were feasible before the June 30 deadline, and "if not, what other arrangements could be envisaged," Annan said in his statement.
"The mission will gather the views of numerous sectors of Iraqi society in its search for alternative solutions which could be envisaged to make progress towards the formation of a provisional government," he said.
- AFP
|
News
