U.N. To Extend Iraq Envoy's Contract

UNITED NATIONS — Although it is being urged to overhaul its mission in Iraq, the United Nations plans to extend the contract of its long-term envoy to Baghdad, Ashraf Qazi, by at least three months, several U.N. sources said. Mr. Qazi, a Pakistani national, will remain in Baghdad while a decision is being made about his replacement. For months, American and U.N. officials said Mr. Qazi would be replaced when his current contract expires this month, but Secretary-General Ban has yet to choose a new envoy.

Britain and America yesterday circulated a new draft resolution among the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council urging more U.N. involvement in Iraq. The draft was written in broad terms and did not assign specific tasks for the world body. British and American officials said the organization should be involved more deeply in the Iraqi political process, including mediating among the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds.

"In order to reduce the sources of violence, we believe that the United Nations can help Iraqis come to a national compact, come to an agreement on big issues on which there are differences," the American ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters yesterday. Mr. Khalilzad, Washington's last ambassador to Iraq, said those issues include "provincial boundaries" as well as resolving disputes such as the one over the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, which is heavily contested by the factions.

The U.N. secretary-general before Mr. Ban, Kofi Annan, was an opponent of the Iraq war, which he called "illegal." Under his leadership, many U.N. officials favored as little involvement in Iraq as possible. This year, Washington urged Mr. Ban to reverse that position. Mr. Qazi was appointed in July 2004. Mr. Annan had resisted allowing U.N. staffers to return to Iraq after they were pulled out of the country following an attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003, in which Mr. Annan's envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 other U.N. officials were killed. Mr. Qazi has left little mark on Iraq's politics since his arrival. Operating with a vague mandate and a small staff, the U.N. mission has operated largely inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, reduced to issuing what one U.N. source described as meaningless press statements, dire humanitarian warnings, and ominous statistics about death rates.

Members of the U.N. Staff Union have expressed concern that Mr. Ban will rush back into large-scale involvement in Iraq before the situation there is completely safe. The United Nations is "constantly monitoring the situation" in Iraq "to determine when certain basic security standards can be met that will allow it to consider a further deployment of U.N. staff," a spokesman for Mr. Ban, Farhan Haq, said yesterday.