New York - Non-essential UN staff working in Afghanistan will be relocated to safer locations and security will be beefed up to protect those working to assist Kabul in run-off presidential elections, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Friday. Ban told employees at UN headquarters in New York that measures are being discussed and funds sought to assist staff carrying out dangerous assignments in war-troubled Afghanistan.
The relocation of non-essential staff will take place in coming weeks, he said without providing details. UN offices and guest houses in Afghanistan will received extra security guards and the government of President Hamid Karzai promised to cooperate, he said.
Ban met early Friday with all heads of UN specialized agencies and departments to discuss new security measures after a Taliban-led raid killed six UN staffers and six other people at a guest house maintained by the UN in the Afghan capital.
"This is not the first time we met to mourn those who died on missions," Ban said.
He said a total of 27 civilian UN employees have been killed this year, most of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in addition to peacekeepers killed around the world.
During a meeting with UN Security Council members on Thursday, Ban praised UN security guards at the Kabul guest house for their heroism, armed only with pistols, in trying to repulse the heavily armed Taliban attackers.
"Without their heroism, there could have been more victims," Ban said.
"Increasingly the UN has become targets because we support the Afghan elections," Ban told reporters after a closed-door session with the UN Security Council, which convened to work out a text condemning the attack in Kabul and agree to additional security steps.
"Our operation is a civilian operation (in Afghanistan), but we are vulnerable," he said, adding that he needs the assembly to allow him to hire more police and security units to guard UN compounds.
The UN guest house, which housed 25 UN staffers at the time of the attack on Wednesday, was rocked by an explosion and immediately stormed by armed attackers, who fought with security guards, the UN said in Kabul. A number of other staffers were wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
The UN mission in Afghanistan is assisting the Kabul government in organizing a run-off, scheduled to take place on November 7.
