By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- After receiving a highly critical report on the series of failures by U.N. officials to secure U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last year, Secretary General Kofi Annan asked for the resignation of his security chief, the United Nations said March 29.

The secretary general asked for the resignation of U.N. security coordinator Tun Myat of Myanmar. But the secretary general rejected Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette's offer to resign, said spokesman Fred Eckhard after the U.N. released a 30-page summary of the independent audit by the specially appointed Security in Iraq Accountability Panel.

Frechette chaired the Steering Group on Iraq, which, the report said, "lacked due care or diligence in the manner in which it dealt with the circumstances of the [United Nations'] return to Baghdad."

The group "should have asked some searching questions about the security aspects of the proposed return plan," the report said.

The secretary general also sent a letter to the steering group "expressing his disappointment and regret with regard to the failures identified by the panel, which are attributable to the Steering Group on Iraq," Eckhard said.

Annan did not accept his deputy's letter of resignation, Eckhard said, because "the failures of the steering group on Iraq were collective and not the responsibility of any one individual, except the security coordinator who sat on that group but whose specific responsibility it was to advise on security matters."

"In the case of the security coordinator, there is individual responsibility," the spokesman said.

Annan named the four-member panel after the August 19, 2003 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people including U.N. special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. The U.N. withdrew its international staff from Iraq after the bombing. U.N. staff have not yet returned except for small teams sent for short assignments lasting a few days or a week. The panel submitted its report to the secretary general on March 3.

While the panel concluded that there was no blurring in the relevant chains of command, it cited ten major failures ranging from a lack of due care at U.N. headquarters to a failure to undertake a review of security requirements at the former Canal Hotel -- the U.N. headquarters in Iraq -- when U.N. staff returned to Baghdad on May 1 at the end of the war.

In its report, the panel said that the U.N. had a "flawed" security program and Myat "not only supported the plan but also actively promoted it, despite becoming aware of the strong reservations" by the regional U.N. security office in Cyprus. It said that Myat "appeared oblivious to the developing crisis" as the security situation in Baghdad deteriorated and "failed to respond" to the warnings that the U.N. could be in danger.

The security coordinator and other high level officials "appeared to be blinded by a conviction that U.N. personnel and installations would not become a target of attack, despite clear warnings to the contrary," the report said.

"It is, therefore, fair to say that this false sense of security was a state of mind that was shared by all the senior U.N. political and humanitarian staff in Iraq," it said.

Eckhard said that there are indications in the report that Vieira de Mello, like the other senior managers and executives in Baghdad, did not have an adequate grasp of the rising threat to them of the deteriorating security situation.

In its report, the panel said that U.N. security officers on the ground in Baghdad could not be held responsible for the failure to recognize the danger signals. Evidence indicates that "as a group, they became increasingly concerned about the deteriorating situation" and made recommendations for security at the compound, the report said.

Panel chairman Gerald Walzer, a former deputy high commissioner for refugees, said that it was fairly clear from the findings that U.N. management grew increasingly concerned about the deteriorating security situation, but the perception continued that the risk was "of being in the wrong place at the wrong time" and not of the U.N. being a target of attack.

"There had been incidents of attacks on international organizations, armed attacks on warehouses, the ICRC [International Committee for the Red Cross] had been attacked, but they always seemed to have an explanation why this incident wasn't really interpreted as a clear sign that the U.N. was in imminent danger," Walzer said at a press conference releasing the report summary.

The panel said that the security coordinator endorsed "a flawed concept of operations" and failed to take remedial action regarding the difficulties U.N. security on the ground in Baghdad was having with increasing demands on its services and rising stress levels of staff.

Two other administrators, who now face disciplinary proceedings, were cited for failing to procure and install blast-resistant film for the headquarters' windows. After the blast, medical officials estimated that 90 percent of the injuries were caused by flying glass shards.

The panel said the two administrators "displayed a profound lack of responsibility and ineptitude" in the way they went about implementing the request for the film. It accused them of "a dereliction of duty" and "a lethargy that is bordering on gross negligence."

The panel also said, "it is probable that if the security measures that were recommended by the security staff had been implemented in a full and urgent manner, the number of casualties sustained in the attack on 19 August would have been considerably reduced."

Other members of the Security in Iraq Accountability Panel were Sinha Basnayake, former director of the General Legal Division of the U.N. Office of Legal Affairs; Kevin Carty, assistant commissioner of Nations Police of Ireland; and Stuart Groves, senior security manager in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.