Top U.N. officials must share responsibility for serious lapses and "inadequate precautions" that caused unnecessary injuries in the bombing of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, a confidential report said for the first time.
The highly critical report, obtained by The Associated Press, said World Health Organization (WHO) medical authorities estimated that "perhaps as many as 80 percent of the injuries and perhaps some deaths were caused by flying shards of glass" from windows that did not have shatter resistant film.
The truck bombing, which took place on August 19 outside U.N. headquarters in the Canal Hotel killed 22 people and injured over 150.
In late June, the United Nations decided to get shatter resistant film for the windows but a U.N. official turned down an offer from the WHO to pay for immediate installation because competitive bidding already had started, the report said.
The report, by a U.N. team sent to Baghdad immediately following the August 19 bombing, was the first to claim that top U.N. officials bear some responsibility along with those dealing with security. It also said warnings before the attack were ignored.
The combined effect of "a series of individual lapses exposed staff to great risk even without the threat of or attack by a truck bomb," the report said.
"A poorly functioning security management team, slow and bureaucratic in coming to decisions, not fully understanding their role and sloppy in its procedures led to inadequate precautions and lack of security discipline."
"Even though the professional security officers consistently raised other threats there was no real sense of urgency to deal with them. The security staff was not prepared for any major serious incident, there was no security plan and due to the lack of cooperation by (U.N.) agencies, staff numbers and locations were not known," the investigators added.
However, the U.N. investigators said the security staff weren't the only ones responsible.
"Some responsibility for the vulnerability of staff lies at all levels of the organization and the associated agencies, funds and programs," the report said.
All high-level U.N. executives and managers "must now ask themselves why many of their staff had no training" and why so many excess staff were sent to a conflict zone when the security level only allowed deployment of staff involved in emergency activities.
The report was one of the documents discussed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the heads of U.N. funds and agencies at their semi-annual meeting on Friday.
Before the closed-door meeting started, Annan sent a letter to over 25,000 U.N. staff members worldwide saying he was appointing an independent team of experts to assess responsibility for the lax security that failed to prevent or reduce the high number of casualties. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
