Poor Security Cost U.N. Lives in Iraq Blast, Report Says

An independent investigation into the Aug. 19 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad concluded Wednesday that the organization ignored warnings that it was a potential target and flouted its own security guidelines, leaving personnel vulnerable to attack.

“The U.N. security management system failed in its mission to provide adequate security to U.N. staff in Iraq,” said the report by a seven-member panel appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to probe the truck-bomb attack that killed 22 people and injured 150.

The panel, headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, said that even if basic security guidelines had been observed, the attack might not have been prevented. But the panel said that if the security team had responded better to threats and intelligence it had received that it was a target of Saddam Hussein loyalists, it might have minimized the casualties.

The panel confirmed reports that U.N. officials had turned down offers of protection from the U.S.-led occupation forces because they didn’t want to be isolated from the Iraqi people and they didn’t want to be seen as part of the occupation.

“The main conclusion of the panel is that the current security management system is dysfunctional,” the 40-page document said. “The observance and implementation of security regulations and procedures were sloppy, and noncompliance with security rules commonplace.”

Specifically, the report noted that in mid-July, U.N. security officials received information that a militia loyal to Hussein had threatened the Canal Hotel, where the U.N. staff was headquartered. Then, days before the bombing, security officers received a threat about an “imminent bomb attack” near the headquarters. And a security report on the day of the bombing specifically referred to the danger of attacks by vehicles loaded with explosives.

But apart from building a protective barrier along the perimeter of the hotel, the U.N. “did not take adequate increased measures to protect its staff and premises,” the panel reported.

The only security guards on duty were unarmed Iraqis who were inside the compound, the report said. Also, U.N. officials had asked the U.S. military to remove razor wire from the hotel access road -- the same road where the truck bomb blew up -- but had not put alternative precautions in place, the document noted.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of the U.N. operation, who died in the rubble of the blast, had declined to move his office, which was exposed to the street, to a safer part of the building, the report added. Vieira de Mello had said he would leave the decision to his successor.

Annan, who is in Spain for a donors conference for Iraq’s reconstruction, said Wednesday that he would discuss staff security issues and “the need to have more stringent minimum operating standards” at a U.N. executive board meeting next week.

After the August attack, Annan pulled all but a skeleton staff out of Iraq and commissioned an evaluation of U.N. missions in high-risk areas throughout the world.

He told Washington and the U.N. Security Council that he would only send staff back to Iraq to play an indispensable role, not a marginal one, and then only after violence subsides. Before the bombing, Annan had twice refused recommendations to evacuate the U.N. staff, preferring instead to maintain a presence in the country.

The damning report is an unusually unvarnished look into the U.N. system and its failures. Like two other reports ordered by Annan -- on the failure of the U.N. to prevent massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina under the world body’s watch -- it was requested by a leader who could be regarded as partly culpable but is at the same time driven to fix the system.

The panel did not place specific blame for the errors or directly criticize Annan, but it said the security system “needs to be reformed” and urged an independent body to review the responsibility of individual U.N. officials.

Annan’s spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said in a statement Wednesday that “the security of the staff has been the constant concern of the secretary-general and the organization.” He added: “The report will be closely studied and steps taken to ensure early implementation of its main recommendations.”