Friday, October 30, 2009 UNITED NATIONS: United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon Thursday said that attacks on UN staff in Afghanistan are carrying out to disrupt presidential elections.He warned that the world body was vulnerable to more attacks in the week leading up to the Afghan elections and pleaded for more help to protect his staff. "We cannot do it alone," the secretary general told a crisis meeting of the UN Security Council following Wednesday's suicide attack by Taliban fighters on a UN guesthouse in Kabul that killed five UN staffers and wounded nine."We need the support of the member states," he told diplomats from the world's most powerful countries. A little over a week before Afghanistan's November 7 run-off presidential election, Ban said UN staff faced a "dramatically escalated" threat and were seen as a "soft target." "Increasingly, the UN is being targeted, in this case precisely because of our support for the Afghan elections," Ban said. The Security Council issued a statement promising "strong support for the secretary general" and saying it "commends the determination of the United Nations not to be deterred by the tragic incident and to carry on its mission in Afghanistan."
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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