UNITED NATIONS, April 10 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Thursday said "It appears there is no functioning government in Iraq at the moment," and reaffirmed it remains the coalition's responsibility to uphold law and order as humanitarian agencies prepare to return to Iraq within days.
With no apparent working government there, he nonetheless met with Iraq's permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Mohammed al-Douri.
There was nothing to report after the meeting because the session "was requested by the ambassador and we feel that anything to be said about what happened in that meeting should be said by the ambassador," Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said.
Said Al-Douri, a former Baghdad University law professor, to reporters: "No comment at all."
Annan was asked before the meeting about what he and al-Douri discussed earlier in the week.
"He didn't ask for an asylum or protection," the secretary-general said of the ambassador. "He had indicated some time earlier that he and his staff sometimes felt harassed and followed by local authorities and police -- this was some time ago, and I think we had raised it with the authorities and that has stopped. When I saw him on Monday, he didn't ask me for help with his status."
Under U.N. regulations, al-Douri remains the representative of Iraq, with full diplomatic status, U.N. officials said, until the Credentials Committee of the General Assembly decides otherwise. The 30-member panel would decide upon a challenge on who was the rightful representative of Baghdad.
In that vacuum, Annan saw responsibility for the coalition.
"From what we have seen in the reports, it appears there is no functioning government in Iraq at the moment," he told reporters. "We also saw the scenes of jubilation, but of course when you think of the casualties -- both military and civilian -- the Iraqis have paid a heavy price for this. We have also seen scenes of looting, and obviously law and order must be a major concern."
Said the secretary-general: "I think the (Security) Council has also reaffirmed that The Hague Regulation and the Geneva Conventions apply to this conflict and that the coalition has a responsibility for the welfare of the people in this area. And I am sure that will be respected."
When Annan was asked about what his assessment of no working government in Iraq meant in practical terms, he replied, "These are the things we need to sort out in the next few days."
Something else that has to be sorted out would be the U.N. search for weapons of mass destruction, the coalition's pretext for regime change in Baghdad.
"On the question of the weapons inspectors -- their mandate is still valid. It is only suspended because it became inoperable on account of the war," the secretary-general said, adding he expected chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei to be able to return "as soon as it is possible, and I think they are the ones with the mandate to disarm Iraq, and when the situation permits they should go back to resume their work."
As for the lifting of sanctions against the Arab state, he said only, "There has been some preliminary talk about it but the council has not really discussed it."
U.N. humanitarian agencies have been saying that within the next few days they intend to return to Iraq due to reports of overwhelmed hospitals being further impeded by the breakdown of law and order and of a dramatic increase in cases of children's death-threatening diarrhea in the south.
The United Nations' World Food Program said if security permitted, it was planning to send international staff back into both northern and southern Iraq within the next few days.
The United Nation's World Health Organization also said it was working hard to return international staff to Baghdad and the rest of Iraq once it was safe.
All international U.N. staff were withdrawn on the eve of the war.
Khaled Mansour, World Food Program spokesman in Amman, Jordan, said the agency would assist in assessing the needs of the internally displaced, checking on property, milling and silo capacity, and preparations for receiving and distributing large-scale food shipments. He said that under plans to re-activate the monthly food rationing system as early as May, WFP needed to bring in about half a million tons of food every month for the next three months.
WHO's Fadela Chaib, also in Amman, said the organization had received disturbing reports from Baghdad that the ability of hospitals to do their work was being severely curtailed by the lack of civil order, and it was "extremely concerned" that this would have a very serious impact on health and healthcare in the capital.
The Medical City hospital center was reported to be running very short of water, which made effective medical care almost impossible, she said. Another hospital, al-Kindi was reported to have been looted. Hospital staff were said to be reluctant to travel to work for fear of being held up by demonstrations, looting or celebrations.
Surgical and medical supplies from central warehouses were not getting through when stocks ran out, and there had been no new deliveries from outside the country since before the conflict began three weeks ago, the spokeswoman said. The already-fragile water and electricity infrastructure was coming under extreme pressure and standby generators were being overworked.
Chaib said WHO was ready to deliver urgently needed surgical and medical supplies but this could only be done once security improved and once secure delivery could be ensured.
"We are just ready to go in, with very skilled people, and stocks piled here and a lot of medical supplies to go as soon as possible," she said.
The U.N. Children's Fund, which said its own offices were looted Wednesday, reported a dramatic increase of deadly diarrhea in children during the past five days.
Doctors at the hospital in the southern port of Umm Qasr reported a staggering increase directly related to the lack of clean water, with 50 cases for the first five days of April compared with 30 for the whole month last year, spokeswoman Wivina Belmonte said.
Based on what the doctors had seen, they concluded that malnutrition rates were likely to increase sharply by the end of the month all over southern Iraq due to the water situation.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees -- which said even the Trebil border post on the western frontier was looted -- reported that the trickle of refugees leaving Iraq swelled to all of 100 reaching Syria in the previous 24-hour reporting period. There had been only a dozen or so a day until Wednesday.
