The Irish-born UN official in charge of implementing the Iraqi oil-for-food humanitarian programme has decided to resign from his post in Baghdad, Joe Humphreys reports.
Mr Denis Halliday (57), who is on holidays in Ireland at present, said through a spokesman in New York: "I am winding up for personal reasons at the end of September."
Friends said he was weary of "political squabbling" within the UN and felt he had come to the end of the road in an already-difficult job. He had been a champion for a better deal for the Iraqis in the oil-for-food programme and clashed with Mr Benon Sevan, the executive director of the programme who was appointed in October.
He was also known to be in favour of lifting sanctions against Iraq, imposed when it invaded Kuwait in August 1990, as soon as possible.
Born in what is now the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin, he attended school in Harcourt Street before studying economics and public administration at Trinity. His parents were Irish Quakers and founding members of the Foreign Students Society in Dublin in the 1930s.
In an interview with The Irish Times in February this year, he said his ambition was to work for an Irish NGO, become an Irish ambassador or retire to Galway and study Irish archaeology and anthropology at UCG.