UN's failure is America's fault

[dArKeR]

It wasn't last year's bomb, but American policy that destroyed the UN's hopes in Iraq

By Salim Lone
THE GUARDIAN , New York
Tuesday, Aug 24, 2004,Page 9

Even before the bomb ripped through our Baghdad headquarters on Aug. 19 last year, taking the lives of 22 of my colleagues, the UN mission in Iraq had already become marginal to the epic crisis being played out there.

Iraq had become the center of both the US war on terror and the war between the extremes of two civilizations. The vicious terrorist attack a year ago surprised no one working for Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN secretary general's special representative. Indeed, the UN's Iraq communications chiefs had met that morning to seek a plan to counter the intensifying perception among Iraqis that our mission was simply an adjunct of the US occupation.

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