The United Nations intends to move its remaining international staff in Baghdad to Cyprus over the weekend where they will decide if and when to return to the volatile Iraqi capital.
The withdrawal will involve some 18 international workers in Baghdad while another 40 or so foreign staff would remain in the northern area around Erbil where it is safer. Some 4,000 Iraqi staff are still on the UN payroll throughout Iraq.
UN officials insisted yesterday the pull out was not an evacuation but a reevaluation of the security situation after a series of deadly suicide bombings in Iraq this week.
"This is a temporary relocation," a UN spokeswoman said. "It does not represent a policy decision to disengage from Iraq."
The move by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was prompted by Monday's suicide bombings against the Red Cross office and four Iraqi police stations in Baghdad. At least 34 people died, 12 of them from the Red Cross, and 200 were wounded.
The attacks shocked the foreign aid community and stirred concerns about whether US-led coalition forces could bring order to the country. The French group Medecins Sans Frontieres has also said it would withdraw staff.
The Bush administration had hoped that humanitarian organizations would remain in Iraq. A State Department official said US Secretary of State Colin Powell argued against the UN action in talks with Mr Annan.
"They are needed," Mr Powell said. "If they are driven out, then the terrorists win."
Annan has come under heavy pressure from senior officials as well as the UN staff union, representing some 5,000 employees around the world, to pull everyone out.
But Annan has to balance safety concerns with the need to keep a UN presence at a time when countries are pressing for the world body to have a bigger role in running Iraq.
Security in Iraq and elsewhere heads the agenda at a meeting Mr Annan holds today and tomorrow with the heads of UN agencies.