Annan recommends ending UN observer mission along Iraq-Kuwait border

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended Tuesday that the United Nations peacekeeping operation that for nearly 12 years monitored the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait should be closed down by the beginning of October in view of the new situation in the region.

"From April 1991 to mid-March 2003, UNIKOM (UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission) was a successful and in many ways a model United Nations peacekeeping operation," Annan says in a report to the Security Council on the mission, which was created to deter violations and report on hostile action along the border.