The Black Vault - Iraq Pullout, Middle East Gloom Cloud UN Assembly

By Paul Taylor - UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites) ordered a partial pullout of staff from Iraq (news - web sites) on Thursday after two suicide bombings in five weeks, in a setback to U.S.-led efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country.

The withdrawal of some international staff to Jordan, with more to follow, added to gloom at the U.N. General Assembly over the Middle East, with Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts in tatters and a crisis looming over Iran's nuclear program.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard called the decision by Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), after a meeting with top security advisers, "a temporary redeployment of international staff in Iraq." He would not give exact numbers.

Annan stopped short of the total withdrawal demanded by the U.N. Staff Union after an Aug. 19 truck bomb attack on the world body's Baghdad headquarters killed special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other staff, and a car bomb on Monday killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded 19.

Paradoxically, the decision came as negotiations were under way in New York to beef up the role of the United Nations in the rebuilding of Iraq's political institutions.

The United States, responsible for security in Baghdad, said it still wanted the United Nations to play a vital role in Iraq's reconstruction.

U.N. sources said Annan's security aides had advocated a total withdrawal but Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) expressed concern about the impact such a move would have on Iraq. The outcome was a compromise, they said.

SECURITY FEARS

The death of a member of the unelected interim Iraqi Governing Council, Akila al-Hashimi, five days after she was shot in Baghdad, compounded fears of growing insecurity.

The deteriorating situation overshadowed diplomatic efforts to unite the Security Council, deeply split over the U.S.-led war, behind a resolution to create a multinational force and set a framework for self-government in Iraq.

Foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the council -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- discussed the way forward with Annan over lunch.

Powell told reporters he was pleased to see "some convergence of views" on a new resolution, including a United Nations role in the political process in Iraq.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw robustly defended the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), saying the U.S.-British occupying powers wanted to hand over to Iraqis as soon as the security situation and the state of Iraqi institutions permit.

"We shall stay in Iraq as long, but only as long, as it is necessary to meet our clear responsibilities, and to restore sovereignty to the Iraqi people as quickly as we can in an orderly manner," Straw told the General Assembly.

"The timetable should be driven by the needs of the Iraqi people and their capacity progressively to assume democratic control, rather than by fixing arbitrary deadlines," he added in an apparent rebuttal of French calls for an immediate symbolic transfer of sovereignty.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, an outspoken war critic, predicted that attempts to thrust democracy on Iraq would either fail or cause instability and insecurity.

"For Iraq to become suddenly a democracy I don't think it will work. ... So in some cases you may need authoritarian rule," he told a news conference.

The U.S. draft resolution says a timetable leading to Iraqi sovereignty has to be set by the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. It calls on the United Nations to assist the council in writing a constitution and planning elections in cooperation with occupying powers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), another opponent of the war, told the General Assembly that Iraq's reconstruction would only succeed if the United Nations played a central role.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told the assembly that peace efforts with the Palestinians were at a standstill because of what he called their failure to dismantle the Hamas militant movement and its "infrastructure of terror."

Diplomats said there was a sense of despair at a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrialized powers about the worsening Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with scant prospect of diplomatic progress.

Highlighting a building crisis with Iran, diplomats in Vienna said the U.N. nuclear watchdog had discovered traces of weapons-grade enriched uranium at a second site in Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has given Tehran until Oct. 31 to prove it does not have a secret atomic arms program or be reported to the Security Council for possible sanctions.

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