UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday warned that the world body was vulnerable to more attacks in the week leading up to the Afghan elections and pleaded for more help to protect his staff.
“We cannot do it alone,” Ban told a crisis meeting of the UN Security Council following Wednesday’s suicide attack by Taliban fighters on a UN guesthouse in Kabul that killed five UN staffers and wounded nine.
“We need the support of the member states,” he told diplomats from the world’s most powerful countries.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A little more than a week before Afghanistan’s run-off presidential election next Saturday, Ban said UN staff faced a “dramatically escalated” threat and were seen as a “soft target.”
“Increasingly, the UN is being targeted, in this case precisely because of our support for the Afghan elections,” Ban said.
The Security Council issued a statement promising “strong support for the secretary-general” and saying that it “commends the determination of the United Nations not to be deterred by the tragic incident and to carry on its mission in Afghanistan.”
Ban gave few details of what could be done to secure the unarmed UN staff, who are playing a crucial role in the holding of Afghanistan’s run-off election.
Wednesday’s attack on the Bekhtar guesthouse, carried out by three Taliban fighters who blew themselves up after a two-hour gun battle, has raised the stakes for the international community ahead of the crucial poll.
The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the vote, which was called in response to massive fraud in the first round.
“We’ll intensify our attacks in the coming days. We’ll disrupt the elections,” Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told reporters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
“We have new plans and tactics for attacks to disrupt the elections,” he added.
More than 100,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and US President Barack Obama is mulling a request by his commander on the ground, General Stanley McChrystal, for tens of thousands of reinforcements.
ROADSIDE BOMB
A roadside bomb yesterday struck a station wagon in eastern Afghanistan, killing eight civilians, a provincial government spokesman said.
The vehicle was traveling through the Khwarano area of Khogyani district in Nangarhar Province, which shares a long, porous border with Pakistan.
“Eight civilians, including one woman, were killed in the roadside bomb explosion,” Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor’s office, told reporters.
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack yesterday.
SOUTH KOREA
Meanwhile yesterday, South Korea’s foreign ministry said the country would send a security contingent of police and troops to Afghanistan to guard the work of a new and larger team of civilian engineers.
South Korea will not allow the troops to engage in combat operations, a ministry spokesman said.
Seoul has been under pressure to contribute troops to US-led operations in Afghanistan, but has said it would not send combat forces.
The announcement comes a week after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to the country and eases a potential point of friction ahead of a visit next month to Seoul by Obama.
South Korea pulled about 200 military engineers and medics from Afghanistan after 23 South Korean church workers were kidnapped and two killed by the Taliban forces there in 2007.
“The team we are planning to create is to aid in the overall reconstruction work at one of the Afghanistan provinces ... aside from the existing team of medical training we are operating in the Bagram US air base,” ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young told a news conference.
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