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Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/
Baghdad/London
Gulf News Online
http://www.gulf-news.com/
Tuesday June 3, 2003

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The new UN representative to Iraq arrived for work yesterday, saying his main priority is to ensure the quick establishment of an interim authority and pave the way for a democratic government.

"Iraq has suffered far too much for far too long," Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN commissioner for human rights, said in a statement upon arriving. "Iraqis deserve better - infinitely better."

A UN Security Council resolution, adopted last month, entrusts Vieira de Mello to work "intensively" with both the Iraqi people and the occupying powers – the United States and Britain – toward the formation of an independent Iraqi government.

"I have been sent here with a mandate to assist the Iraqi people and those responsible for the administration of this land to achieve ... freedom, the possibility of managing their own destiny and determining their own future," he said.

Vieira de Mello, on a four-month leave from his rights commissioner job to take the Iraq assignment, also will work to provide humanitarian aid, promote legal and judicial reforms and assist in building a civilian police force.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy said yesterday two small boats carrying four U.S. soldiers and at least three civilians disappeared in northern Gulf waters on Sunday.

The Fifth Fleet said the two boats were heading towards the Shatt Al-Arab waterway from Iraq's Mina Al-Bakr oil terminal when they vanished. The navy's Bahrain-based Maritime Liaison Office said in a statement to merchant shipping that the vessels had been on their way to the Iraqi port of Faw to pick up Iraqi oil workers.

The cause of the boats' disappearance was not known.

In Baghdad, the U.S. civilian administrator said recruitment for the New Iraqi Corps, the American-installed replacement for Saddam Hussain's military, will begin by the end of the month.

L. Paul Bremer also said thousands of demobilised enlisted men from Saddam's army would be hired next week to clean up sites that would be used for the training of the new military.

The moves come more than a week after Bremer dissolved Saddam's military and, in the process, threw thousands of career soldiers out of work.

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Direct Link:
--http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=89225

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