Red Cross Closing Baghdad, Basra Offices
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA - The international Red Cross, already planning to reduce staff in
Iraq following an attack on its Baghdad headquarters, said Saturday it is
temporarily closing its offices in the capital and the southern city of
Basra because of security concerns.
The agency will maintain a presence in northern Iraq, said Florian Westphal,
spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"We decided that in view of an extremely dangerous and volatile situation
that we would have to temporarily close our offices in Baghdad and Basra,"
he said. Basra is Iraq's second largest city.
Westphal confirmed the decisions disclosed by ICRC President Jakob
Kellenberger in an interview Saturday in the Swiss daily newspaper
Tages-Anzeiger of Zurich.
"This decision has to be seen in the context that we clearly decided against
seeking any military protection for buildings or staff," Westphal said.
Kellenberger said in the interview, "We must painfully acknowledge that the
ICRC as a large humanitarian organization has become a target of attacks for
a group of people."
This has forced the agency to reconsider how to carry out its humanitarian
work while protecting its employees, Kellenberger said.
"In the coming weeks we will have to redefine our modus operandi, the way we
are deployed," he said.
Besides the offices in Iraq's two largest cities the agency also has a large
office in Irbil, in the Kurdish-dominated north of Iraq.
Westphal declined "for security reasons" to go into details about how much
the decision would affect the work of some 30 foreign staffers and 600
Iraqis who work for the Swiss-run, neutral ICRC.
He said the ICRC continued to plan to reduce the number of foreign staff
because of the suicide bombing of the agency's Baghdad headquarters, "but we
will maintain a presence of expatriates."
"The situation is so tense on the ground that we don't want to get into
details," Westphal said.
He said the ICRC had received no direct threat but made its decision on the
basis of "an overall assessment of the situation."
The ICRC has been deciding which jobs held by the international employees
are essential and who will remain to fill them, Westphal said.
The Swiss-run organization had to find temporary headquarters in Baghdad
after its offices in the Iraqi capital heavily damaged by a suicide bomber
last month.
ICRC workers already were keeping a low profile.
Two Iraqi employees of the ICRC were killed in the attack, along with 10
other people outside the compound.
Iraqi employees can perform much of the ICRC's relief work. But
international staff are needed to visit prisoners held by U.S. forces and
their allies.
Under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, the ICRC meets privately
with prisoners to check on their conditions and exchange family messages.
The conventions also require the ICRC to observe conditions in a country
under occupation and, if necessary, remind the occupying power of its
obligations to protect and assist the local population.
In addition, the ICRC provides emergency medical aid, water and sanitation
and educates Iraqis on how to avoid land mines and other explosives.
Other relief organizations have been reviewing their staffing or cutting
back in Iraq.
The ICRC has maintained strict neutrality in more than two decades of
deployment in Iraq, through the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War and the U.S.-led
invasion last spring.
It had 130 foreign employees in the country last summer, but has been
reducing the numbers as threats against all international organizations have
grown.
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