UN claims broad role in Iraq, chides US on safety

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters)

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spelled out on Friday a broad and ambitious plan for a U.N. role in Iraq and prodded Britain and the United States to quickly establish order and let Iraqis control their future. ---

he said Iraqis were lining up to tell the U.N. special representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, that quickly creating an interim government was their ''central concern.''

Vieira de Mello, who is also the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, had informed the military government that Iraqis must quickly be given tangible power, Annan said. ''There is a pressing need to set out a clear and specific sequence of events leading to the end of military occupation.''

Security was the other common thread he and Vieira de Mello found in their contacts with ordinary Iraqis, Annan said.

The people they spoke with ''expressed deep concern about the precarious, some believed deteriorating, security situation, particularly in Baghdad,'' he said. ---

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