inside the glass house

UN a sitting-duck target
NEW YORK-- As veteran UN staffers would recall, one of the first known politically motivated terrorist attacks on the UN took place when the charismatic Ernesto Che Guevara was at the headquarters building in New York to address the General Assembly session in December 1964.

The Argentinian-born Cuban revolutionary, still venerated by guerrilla fighters throughout the world, was at the podium in the cavernous General Assembly hall when his speech was momentarily drowned by the sound of an explosion. The anti-Castro forces in the US, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had mounted an insidious campaign to stop Che Guevera from speaking.

A 3.5-inch bazooka was fired at the 39-storeyed glasshouse by the East River while a CIA-inspired anti-Castro, anti-Che Guevara demonstration was taking place outside the UN building on First Avenue. But the anti-tank rocket launcher -- which was apparently not as sophisticated as today's shoulder-fired missiles and rocket propelled grenades -- missed its target and fell into the river.

Wildest episode
One newspaper report at that time described it as "one of the wildest episodes since the United Nations moved into its East River headquarters in 1952." The incident took place when Che Guevera, spiffy in his trade-mark olive green army fatigues, was launching a blistering attack on US foreign policy and denouncing a proposed de-nuclearisation pact for the Western hemisphere.

After his Assembly speech, Che Guevera was asked about the attack aimed at him. ''The explosion has given the whole thing more flavour,'' he joked, as he chomped on his Cuban cigar. When he was told by a reporter that the New York city police had also nabbed a woman, described as an anti-Castro Cuban exile, who had pulled out a knife intended to kill him, Che Guevera said: "It is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun."

But in these days of increased suicide bombings and rising new military attacks on international institutions, no diplomat or visiting politician is willing to take the chance -- or joke about it. The deteriorating security situation the world over has also left the UN jittery. Last week a UN staffer working for the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees was fatally shot at close range in Afghanistan forcing the UN to pull out its staff from that country.

The two bomb attacks on the UN compound in Baghdad have also resulted in all its international staff -- numbering more than 500 -- being withdrawn from Iraq leaving only locally recruited staff to hold the beseiged UN fortress there. The UN says it has no plans to return to Baghdad until the security situation improves.

The first suicide bombing on August 19 claimed the lives of 22 staffers, including Under-Secretary-General Sergio Vieira de Mello, who headed UN operations in Iraq. At least 150 others were injured in the attack, many severely. The second attack took place September 22, unnerving UN employees further. An attack on the Red Cross in October claimed the lives of over 20, mostly Iraqis.

No more sacred
Following the UN bombings, two senior UN officials, Ramiro Lopes da Silva, acting special representative of Annan in Iraq, and Tun Myat, UN security coordinator, were forced to step down in early November.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters last week that no institution is sacred anymore. "We have seen bombs and attacks go on all around us and we have also seen the UN itself and the blue flag targeted directly."

Annan said that attacks have also been directed against "neutral" humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. "Obviously, this new environment is going to complicate our work and it also going to demand additional resources for us to set up better security arrangements for our staff," he added.
"But I can assure you, that in my contacts with ambassadors around this building, they are very conscious of the dangers we live in," Annan said.

But not so, say members of the UN Staff Union, who are complaining that all diplomats, staffers and resident UN correspondents are now exempted from security checks when they enter the UN building. The staffers and the press have no qualms being frisked but diplomats consider it demeaming. Even vehicles carrying Permanent Representatives are exempted from inspections.

The Staff Union has said these exemptions make the UN headquarters vulnerable to an attack and put the lives of 5,000 staffers in jeopardy. The terrorist attacks against the UN has changed the way that staff members now view security. The UN, they rightly say, must be better protected to handle terrorist threats. Or it will be a sitting duck.

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