U.N. Begins Pullout of Guards in Iraq

The United Nations has flown 50 of its guards out of Iraq this week, and the 186 others remaining are expected to leave by mid-June, a U.N. source said Friday.

“Fifty guards have left during the past two days. One group left yesterday and the other today,” the source said in Baghdad.

The guards were sent to Iraq after the Persian Gulf War to look after U.N. offices and relief convoys. Their presence was also seen as reassuring millions of dissident Kurds who fled to mountains on the Turkish and Iranian borders following the collapse of a brief postwar uprising against Baghdad.

Of the guards remaining, eight are in Baghdad and the rest in the Kurdish north. U.N. officials in Baghdad cited a lack of funds as the reason for the pullout.