Pressure is building within the United Nations for the gradual return of expatriate relief staff to Iraq to organise aid despite the ongoing violence there, officials said Wednesday.
The UN refugee agency is in the course of boosting its permanent presence in Iraq to two people, including one in Baghdad, while the UN's humanitarian coordination office last week gained approval for a strategic plan outlining a return to Iraq, aid chiefs said.
"UNHCR has already decided to upgrade our presence in Iraq. We will have an international presence in Baghdad. And we will increase our operations in the country," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said after a two-day conference on Iraq's displacement crisis.
"We know there are difficulties, there are security concerns, but there are things we can do and it's time to do our best to take profit of all opportunities to help really the people in distress," he told journalists.
John Holmes, the world body's new Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, told the meeting Tuesday: "We cannot afford to look away and duck our responsibilities. I can assure you that the UN system will certainly not do so."
Currently the United Nations has a security ceiling on the number of staff located in Iraq following the deadly truck bomb attack on the world body's headquarters in Baghdad in 2003 which prompted a pull out from the country.
Most operations by international agencies are conducted by remote control, mainly from neighbouring Jordan.
Relief is currently delivered by local Iraqi staff or subcontracted local agencies which know how to navigate the sectarian divide and negotiate with tribal elders, often at huge risk, aid workers said.
"I do think we were not doing enough," Guterres said in an interview with the BBC.
The refugee chief said he favoured more cooperation between international agencies for a "more effective presence inside the country."
UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort told AFP that a permanent UNHCR staffer was established in the northern city of Erbil, while another was being appointed to liaise directly with the Iraqi government from an office in Baghdad's secure Green Zone.
Prior to the 2003 bombing, the UNHCR had several expatriate staff in each of its seven offices throughout the country, a level the agency would like to restore, she indicated.
"We would like to to have a full presence at one stage but not in the near future," van Genderen Stort said.
Holmes underlined that the "Strategic Framework" was "only a first step" to boost international humanitarian action in Iraq.
The UN aid chief and former senior British diplomat said there was a need to find "ways to operate inside Iraq despite the terrible insecurity which dominates significant parts of country."
"It means a massive new effort to persuade the people in Iraq that whatever their past perceptions, humanitarian assistance from the UN and others is neutral, impartial and independent of political considerations," he explained.
Foreign aid workers who remained in Iraq have been kidnapped and killed in recent years.
On Wednesday a series of car bomb attacks ripped through Baghdad, killing at least 160 people despite a highly publicised security offensive by the Iraqi government and US-led forces in the capital.
"In all the places where you do not hear there was a bomb today, we can move," said Rafiq Tschannen, Iraq chief for the International Organisation for Migration, a non-UN body which helps displaced civilians inside Iraq.
"None of our projects has suffered great delays due to security because we work with Iraqi counterparts who know the place. They know that today we do not move here, but three days later they can," he added.
Tschannen operates from Amman with regular visits to Iraq. Aid is not labelled or flagged under a deliberate low key approach preferred by the local Iraqi workers, he explained.
