Suicide attack: Has Iraq become ungovernable?

Why was it that a vicious bomb in Baghdad on Tuesday targeted the United Nations - which had not sanctioned the Iraqi invasion and had only recently set up a mission to help to rebuild the country - rather than the United States, the instrument of Saddam Hussain's removal?

Though the UN has lost in the process many of its top experts, including a brilliant diplomat and a popular leader favoured by the U.S. President and tip-ped as a possible future UN Secretary General, the real target was the UN.

The question is not so much 'who is behind it' but 'why the UN'. The fact that it was the UN Baghdad's headquarters which were hit on Tuesday has prompted some officials to question whether Iraq has become ungovernable.

The Americans occupiers are now discovering - and the British are rediscovering - the old truth, established when British colonial forces in Iraq used all sort of methods in the 1920s, including gas, to quell Iraqi Kurdish and Arab resistance.

According to international law, security of the UN and other nationalities, is the responsibility of the occupying power.

The UN has been in a difficult position in Iraq - one which, if not redefined, may become impossible. It has been perceived, rightly or wrongly, as subservient to the U.S. and UK and has not restricted itself to humanitarian operations only.

Using its mandate under Security Council resolution 1483, it has played an advisory role to the Governing Council, mostly anti-Saddam veterans.

The late UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello himself, who died in Tuesday's bomb, was associated with the formation of the Iraqi Council. Sources in the council told Gulf News that de Mello was personally instrumental in "stitching the council together".

"He helped persuade the Najaf-led Iraqi Shiites, to the annoyance of the Iranian clerics, to join the council and spent many long nights in an attempt to bring them aboard," a source said. He added: "This might have helped to make the UN a target." But others see the attack might also have been intended to block off any American retreat using the UN as a cover.

"This was a potent and diabolical message - that even the UN is unacceptable," sources in London said.

The decision has to be taken therefore about whether the UN does more in Iraq or does less. "If it does more," an official said, "it lays itself open to further attack. If it does less, it shows itself to be irrelevant."

Gulf News has learnt that the British Government is now ready to consider an amendment to the UN mandate in Iraq. He said: "Despite its ugly nature, some good might come out of this attack." By this he meant that the concerns of those countries worried about the secondary role of the UN would have to be addressed.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says he is "open minded" on the issue, a diplomatic signal that he is ready for a negotiation.

He will be in New York this week on a previously planned meeting with Kofi Annan. The ambiguous position of the UN has already been the rock on which efforts to bring other countries in as peacekeepers had foundered.

India, for one, said that it would not help unless there was a peacekeeping mandate.