U.N. to move 600 staff from Afghanistan

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By Betsy Pisik

UNITED NATIONS | The United Nations announced Thursday that it would begin moving hundreds of international staff members in Afghanistan to safer locations after a suicide bombing demonstrated that the blue U.N. flag increasingly has become a bull's-eye for terrorists instead of a security blanket for local populations.

The exodus will take place in the coming weeks and affect about 600 U.N. workers, more than half of the world body's foreign staff in Afghanistan, U.N. officials said Thursday.

"After last weeks attacks, were forced to take additional security measures for our staff here," U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters in Kabul. "Were providing additional security and moving people to more secure places, and we are in the process of reviewing all our locations."

The move could complicate a decision by President Obama on whether to deploy additional troops to augment the nearly 68,000 U.S. forces now in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has stressed that success in Afghanistan depends on civilian aid as much as it does on defeating the Taliban insurgency.

The U.N. decision drew criticism from a senior NATO commander.

Gen. Egon Ramms told journalists at the Innich command bunker on the Netherlands-Germany border that civilian and military cooperation is crucial to the Afghan mission.

"By withdrawing personnel from Afghanistan, [the United Nations] will not be able to reach the progress and success we need," he said, according to Agence France-Presse.

In addition to the U.S. deployment, other members of NATO have sent more than 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

The U.N. evacuation followed a pre-dawn attack by gunmen wearing suicide vests on a guesthouse in Kabul a week ago. Five U.N. employees were among eight people killed.

Before the assault, international staff of about 1,100 lived in 93 guesthouses, which required 93 separate security details.