UN chief Kofi Annan said Wednesday he remains concerned about security, which is the "determinant" factor in deciding when to send a United Nations team to Baghdad.
He said he was insisting on "appropriate security measures" before sending a UN team back to Iraq to study whether fair elections can be held before the planned transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people at the end of June.
"Let's me be quite honest and clear: we are still concerned about security," he said, adding that the UN Security Council had mandated him to decide when the UN team should go to Baghdad. "The security situation is a concern. We are reviewing it daily," he said.
He added: "I have insisted on appropriate security measures before they go in ... The (US-led) coalition assures me they are doing everything they can including training Iraqi police and army to pacify the situation.
"We are preparing ourselves to be able to go back, but security will be determinant."
Annan announced in Paris on Tuesday that the UN is to return to Baghdad, after a three-month absence, to conduct the review on holding elections before July.
The UN pulled its non-Iraqi staff out of Iraq in October because of the deteriorating security situation, after an August 19 attack on the UN's Baghdad headquarters which killed top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.
Palestinian Authority faces 'partial collapse'
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned Wednesday that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority faces "partial collapse" if the present impasse in the Middle East peace process continues.
"I am afraid that if the situation continues, we will see ... real despair and perhaps even partial collapse of the Palestinian Authority," Annan told reporters during a visit to Brussels. "We need to find a way of breaking the impasse and moving forward. Everybody agrees that the solution is land for peace, and we need to really find a way of bringing the parties to the table," he added.