On October 21, 2003, an independent report said that mismanagement, incompetence, and security breaches were responsible for the high death toll from the suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
On October 30, 2003, the UN decided to pull out all its foreign staff from Iraq following the recent attacks including on the Red Cross on October 27 and its own office that killed its envoy Sergio Viera de Mello on August 19.
On March 29, 2004, Kofi Annan fired a senior UN security official, Tun Myat, for not protecting staff in the UN headquarters in Baghdad. It was bombed on August 24, 2003 and 22 UN staff members died. Annan also criticised the deputy secretary-general Louise Frechette, who chaired the steering group on Iraq. She gave her resignation, but it was refused.
On April 9, 2004, it became known that Washington had asked the French to participate in an international protection force for UN employees in Iraq. The French foreign ministry's spokesman said that it was too early to answer to the request, one-way or the other.
On July 22, 2004, the UN said that the new UN chief envoy to Iraq, Pakistani diplomat Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, would go to Baghdad next month with a small team to re-establish a permanent UN presence. The UN had as many as 600 international staff working in Iraq following the US-led invasion. All were pulled out last year after a bomb attack on UN offices in Baghdad killed 22 people, including Qazi's predecessor, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Just a handful of UN staff is in Iraq at the moment: a team of technical experts helping set up a national conference on Iraq's political future, and a security liaison team. Hundreds of UN staff are working on Iraqi projects from neighbouring Jordan.
On August 20, 2003, after the attack on the UN building in Baghdad, President Bush is thinking about seeking a new UN Security Council resolution backing an international stabilisation force in exchange for giving more power to the UN, but not full control of the country. The American Army should have protected the UN building, but they did not, although the Iraqi governing council told them that there was a specific threat against it. Now Bush wants to pass the problem of bringing security to Iraq to the UN, that is to other nations, as it is obvious that they have failed in managing post-war Iraq -like they failed in Afghanistan and in all the places they invaded. France, Germany, China, and Russia will probably refuse as the Americans -with the help of Doggy Blair- made the mess, they should sort it out.
On August 20, 2003, Kofi Annan said that the UN would help rebuilding Iraq. On the other hand, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund pulled out sending their staff to Jordan. The wounded members of the UN staff flew to Amman, Jordan, to be taken care off in local hospitals. Some others were traumatised by what they saw and left.
On August 20, 2004, the United Nations marked the first anniversary of the bombing that shattered its Baghdad headquarters. In an emotional ceremony in Geneva, linked by video to New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan pledged to do everything in his power to ensure such a tragedy never happened again. Twenty-two people died in the blast including the senior UN envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The attack prompted the UN to reassess its operations in Iraq, which have been massively reduced due to heightened security fears. The UN's envoy to Iraq, Qazi, said he hoped signs of progress towards democracy would undermine support for insurgents battling US troops and Iraqi security forces.
Two organisations representing more than 60,000 United Nations staff members
urged Secretary-General Kofi Annan on October 7, 2004, to pull all UN staff
out of Iraq because of the 'unprecedented' risk to their safety and security.
In a joint letter to Mr Annan, the staff organisations cited a dramatic
escalation in attacks in Iraq and said 'the UN has become a direct target,
one that is particularly prone to attacks by ruthless extremist terrorist
factions'.