The United Nations said on Thursday it would evacuate hundreds of its international staff from Afghanistan for several weeks due to deteriorating security, a sharp blow for Western efforts to stabilise the country.

Spokesman Aleem Siddique said the UN would relocate about 600 of its roughly 1,100 international staff, with some being moved to safer sites within Afghanistan and the rest withdrawn from the country temporarily.

The move, a week after five UN foreign staff were killed by militants in Kabul, complicates US President Barack Obama’s counter-insurgency war strategy.

Obama is due to decide within weeks whether to approve a request from his Afghanistan commander Gen Stanley McChrystal for tens of thousands of additional troops. “We’re doing everything we can to minimise disruption of our work during this period,” UN special envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide said at a news conference in Kabul.

“We are simply doing what we have to do following... to look after our workers in a difficult moment while ensuring that our operations in Afghanistan can continue.” Eide said some staff would relocate to Dubai where the UN has a facility and where it is “inside the mission area”. Siddique said the UN staff would return in three to four weeks after its security measures are changed.

“It will be a consolidation of staff. At the moment we have 93 guest-houses across Kabul and there will be a consolidation of those guest houses so that we can provide better security in fewer places,” he said.

The UN mission played a critical role in organising elections in the country this year, and its agencies such as UNICEF run health, education and other programmes. In last week’s attack, Taliban suicide bombers entered a guest-house used by UN staff, killing five foreigners and prompting a security review by many of the international agencies in the country. Reuters

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