IRAQ 18/6/2004 10:59 ANNAN RULES OUT RETURN OF UN AFTER ANOTHER DAY OF BLOODSHED Politics/Economy, Standard "I am grateful to the Security Council that they inserted the phrase that we could go in 'as circumstances permit'. As of today, circumstances do not permit. We are monitoring the situation extremely carefully,?said the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan at the end of another day of bloodshed in Iraq. His comments ?referring to the recently approved Security Council resolution regulating the imminent transfer of power from the US administration to an interim Iraqi government and the subsequent transition period leading to elections, theoretically before the end of January 2005, and which provides for a "leading role" for the world body ?could spell a blow to attempts to restore peace and security to the war-ravaged country. The UN withdrew from Iraq at the end of last summer following the bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad, in which Brazilian envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 22 others were killed. Yesterday, at least 41 Iraqis were killed in two separate car bomb attacks, the first yesterday morning outside a military recruitment centre near the old Al Muthana airport in the capital, in which 35 army hopefuls died and 141 people were injured, and the second outside the city council offices in Yetrib, north of Baghdad, in the afternoon, in which six soldiers lost their lives and a further four were injured. The US civil administrator Paul Bremer claims that Abu Mossab al Zarqawi, the terrorist network al Qaedaæ top man in Iraq, was behind the morning bombing. Meanwhile, reports arrived from Budapest (Hungary) that a lance corporal serving with the Hungarian contingent in Iraq had died of wounds sustained in an explosion roughly 70 kilometres from Hilla, where the soldiers have their base. The Iraqi ministry for electricity has also reported that a high-voltage pylon near the Mossayeb power station south of Baghdad has been sabotaged, with negative repercussions for electricity supplies to the capital.[LC]
