UNITED NATIONS: Roughly 200 UN expatriate staff will be temporarily relocated outside Afghanistan in the wake of a deadly attack on a guesthouse for UN workers, UN chief Ban ki-moon said here on Friday.

‘Approximately 200 will relocate to other duty stations in the region,’ the UN secretary general told reporters after briefing the Security Council on his recent visit to Kabul.

‘It is not 600 as has been reported by some media,’ he added. ‘We are not evacuating. We will not, cannot and must not be deterred. Our work will continue. Our colleagues will have to manage temporarily with less administrative support.’

Earlier this week, Ban held talks with security advisors in Kabul after Taliban suicide gunmen stormed a Kabul hostel on October 28 in a dawn attack that killed five UN workers.

UN officials said another 400 expatriates were being relocated to safer sites within Afghanistan.

In total, about 600 expatriate staff, from a total of 1,100 foreigners, would thus be temporarily relocated either within Afghanistan or abroad, they added.

The UN has about 5,600 employees in Afghanistan, about 80 per cent of whom are Afghans, and the relocations will affect around 12 per cent of the total deployment.

The world body has made it clear it has no intention of abandoning Afghanistan, where 100,000 US-led foreign troops are battling a bloody insurgency eight years after the extremist Taliban regime was driven from power.

Meanwhile the UN Security Council said in a statement that it looked forward to working with newly-reelected Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Council members stressed the need for ‘a renewed inclusive political dialogue process led by the Afghan government ... in order to achieve national unity and a peaceful and prosperous future for all the people of Afghanistan.’

They urged the Karzai administration to ‘effectively address the issues facing the country, including security, good governance and the fight against corruption as well as economic recovery, improving the livelihood of its people, and the cross-cutting issue of counter-narcotics.’

Tuesday Karzai vowed that his new government would eradicate corruption and unite the country after months of political chaos, while offering an olive branch to Taliban insurgents.

Karzai was declared president for another five years Monday after the election commission, whose chief he appointed, cancelled a run-off ballot following the withdrawal of the only challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. —AFP