UN to beef up Baghdad mission

Michael Howard in Baghdad reports that the UN is to renews mission to bring peace to Iraq

He writes that the United Nations is ready to help Iraq solve its most intractable political problems, including the future status of the contested northern city of Kirkuk, its top official in the country said yesterday.

Staffan de Mistura, Ban Ki-moon's special representative for Iraq, told the Guardian that the UN was now beefing up its engagement with the country, four years after the bombing of the organisation's compound in Baghdad that killed 22 UN staff. De Mistura's predecessor Sergio Vieira de Mello was among the dead. Since then, the UN's Iraq programme has been largely operating out of Jordan.