Local authorities in the north urge aid agencies to return

Authorities and agencies in northern Iraq are encouraging NGOs and the UN to return to the region. In the wake of Saddam Hussein's capture, hopes are high that the security environment in an area that has been relatively peaceful will improve even more. However, in his latest report on Iraq, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the UN Security Council that the risks were still too high to return international staff to Iraq and to resume operations. In August 23 people, including the UN's top envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, were killed when a truck bomb exploded outside the UN headquarters in Baghdad. Lt-Col Harry Schute, the commanding officer of the US army's Civil Military Operations Centre, told IRIN in the northern city of Arbil, that he believed the security situation in the three northern governorates was now conducive to a broad resumption of humanitarian work. "We'd welcome more NGOs in the north - there's always room for more people to come and help with the workload," he said. In September a suicide car bomb in Arbil killed two and wounded more than 50, including six US military personnel, but this was the last major attack in the northern region. "It [the attack] was a wake-up call, but as Americans we got our wake-up call two years ago [11 September] and the message was any time, any place for terrorists," Schute said. "In my opinion, the Kurdish region is perfectly fine for NGOs to work in, but as with many places in the world you have to take appropriate measures to make sure your safety is accounted for." The arrest of Saddam could only improve security, he said, with former regime loyalists or "dead-enders" now likely to give up the struggle. "Many of them will get the message now that it is really over and he's not coming back to power and there's nothing worth fighting and dying for." The Kurdistan Regional Government's deputy minister of reconstruction and development, Fakher Maraan, told IRIN in Arbil that security in the northern governorates was good and he was disappointed that the UN had pulled most of its international staff out of the north in the wake of the August bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad. Having lived in the United States for eight years, he had clear opinions on international security. "I would prefer to live in Iraq than New York or Houston, Texas. The UN can say what it likes to say, but I would rather live in Baghdad than New York - I feel safer there. I would prefer to live in Kurdistan than the nicest areas of the US or in London," he added. "In Kurdistan we've had bits and pieces of attacks - small things, but this can happen anywhere in the world, and I guarantee that this place is safer than Africa for the UN to be in," Maraan said. Philip Peturs, the executive director of the Kurdish NGO, Kurdistan Reconstruction Organisation, told IRIN that the north had many needs and wanted help from the international community. "Now, after Saddam is finished forever, we hope that the day-by-day security situation will get better," the Swedish NGO Qandil's programme coordinator, Marinka Baumann, told IRIN in Arbil, noting that security in the north had always been relatively calm. Whereas Qandil would have liked to have been able to move into other areas south of what is known as the Green Line - the boundary of the former Iraqi regime's territory with Kurdistan - security had prohibited this. Staff in Mosul, which lies south of the Green Line, had been uncomfortable with safety at times and suspended operations temporarily. However, now that the natural leader of any opposition had been removed, Qandil hoped to expand its operations. "There could also be revenge attacks and reaction, but in the longer term, when the head of the snake is cut off, the snake usually dies. That is what we are hoping for," said Baumann.