IRAQ: International officials vowed yesterday their work in Iraq would go on as they paid their last respects to the head of the UN mission in the country, one of 24 people killed in this week's devastating truck-bomb attack.
In a ceremony at Baghdad airport before Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello's body was placed on a plane to begin a journey back to his native Brazil, a colleague revealed one of his dying wishes was that the United Nations continued to operate in Iraq.
"Even under the most extreme pain, pinned down under rubble in his office, he said to First Sergeant Von Zehle jnr of the coalition forces trying to rescue him: 'Don't let them pull the mission out'," colleague Mr Benon Sevan told mourners.
Underscoring the continuing volatility and violence of post-war Iraq, the US military said a gunman had shot dead a serviceman on duty with a Marine unit on Thursday in the town of Hilla, 100km south of Baghdad.
Occupying US soldiers have faced daily guerrilla ambushes since the end of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein in April, but such attacks were overshadowed this week by the suspected suicide bombing at the UN compound on Tuesday. "We will not be deterred by any act of terrorism," Iraq's US governor Mr Paul Bremer said at the memorial ceremony.
The diplomat broke down at one point.
Six pall-bearers loaded Mr de Mello's coffin, draped in a blue UN flag, into a Brazilian air force jet. Two bagpipers played Amazing Grace. The jet was to stop off in Geneva to collect Mr de Mello's wife and two children.
"We will overcome - we will stay the course," said Mr Sevan, the director of the UN oil-for-food programme, responsible for supplying Iraq's basic needs while it was under sanctions.
The dynamic Mr de Mello (55) was one of the United Nations's top officials, regarded as a possible future secretary general. He served in many of the world's troublespots.
The UN has been keen to stress the bombing will not force it to give up its mission of political and economic reconstruction and humanitarian work in Iraq. But it is clear that it will be severely affected, at least in the short term. Up to half the UN's Baghdad-based staff will have left Iraq by the end of the week, a UN official in neighbouring Jordan said. Staff wounded in Tuesday's attack or traumatised by it have been authorised to leave.
"We are reducing drastically at the moment ... We might have 30 to 50 per cent left by the end of this week ... probably 50 per cent coming out," Ms Christine McNab, the UN resident co-ordinator in Jordan, told reporters in Amman.
Earlier, a UN chartered plane arrived at Amman's Marka airport from Baghdad, evacuating another 40 international staff.
A Jordan military plane arrived at the airport from Baghdad carrying 18 wounded UN staff for treatment in local hospitals.
The death of the serviceman in Hilla - whose name and unit were not released by officials - brings to 64 the number of US military personnel killed by hostile action since President Bush declared the Iraq war over, on May 1st.