Liberian diplomat to head UN Political Office

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a senior Liberian diplomat as his new representative and head of the UN Political Office for Somalia. According to a UN report, the new incumbent is Winston Tubman, formerly a senior adviser to the chief of the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM). He replaces David Stephen "who did excellent work in Somalia before taking up his new assignment in Guinea-Bissau recently", Annan said. The UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Carolyn McAskie, who recently returned to New York from a visit to Somalia, reiterated that the international community should support grassroots efforts in Somalia to rebuild the shattered nation. "At the level of communities, the reality of Somalia is very different from the image of what it was a few years ago," she told reporters in New York. Stressing that she was "not trying to pretend" that the country had suddenly transformed itself, now was however the right time for investment at grassroots level. She warned that the international community's emphasis on the political process in Somalia posed "the very serious risk of putting in place a political structure that has nothing to anchor itself in".