Secretary-General Mr Kofi Annan said today that the United Nations "will have to change our way of doing business" after a highly critical report blamed "dysfunctional" security for unnecessary casualties in the August bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad.
But Mr Annan speaking to reporters after returning from a Madrid, Spain, donors conference for Iraq sidestepped a question on whether he deserved or accepted blame for the security failures cited by the U.N.-appointed panel, saying he needed more time to study the report.
"Obviously, that is one issue of accountability, what happened, who did what or did not do what," he said.
The panel, chaired by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, issued a report Wednesday citing massive security failures before the Aug. 19th truck bombing that killed 22 people, including top UN envoy Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, and injured more than 150 others.
Some of those failures remained until September 22nd, when another car bomb exploded outside agency headquarters in Baghdad, killing the attacker and an Iraqi policeman, and wounding 19 people.
The panel criticised the United Nations for shunning protection from U.S.-led coalition forces the only source of security in Iraq and for ignoring "credible information on imminent bomb attacks in the area." It also accused the United Nations of violating its own security rules.
Mr Annan said the United Nations' security system worked well for the past 50 years.
"But the world has changed, and we will have to change our way of doing business to be able to protect our staff around the world," he said.
The review of UN security would not be limited to Iraq but would encompass the organization's worldwide activities, Mr Annan said.
"On the questions of return to Iraq, obviously we are operating in a new environment which we are assessing very, very seriously," he said. "Since the two bomb attacks against us, we've had to rethink our own approach and our own presence."
The secretary-general is scheduled to discuss security issues at a meeting next week with senior UN executives.
The report noted that the Security Council's unanimous approval of a resolution last week authorizing deployment of a multinational force in Iraq may enable the United Nations to return there without having to rely on the U.S.-led coalition for security.
Mr Annan noted that the resolution requires the multinational force to provide security for the United Nations.
"These are aspects that we need to work out to see exactly what kind of security, what arrangements, who's going to do what and what we will do ourselves," he said.
A coalition spokesman in Baghdad said the panel's recommendations "are ones we can all learn from and benefit from."