The United Nations went about its business on Friday, a day after authorities uncovered an alleged plot to bomb the headquarters, with one question on almost everyone's mind.
Why target the U.N., an organization aimed at developing international peace and brotherhood?Why harm an institution that has helped the developing world and championed the cause of Palestinians? Why target an organization where 14,000 people, many of them from the developing world, work every day?
There's plenty of speculation:
- Because its secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, is an Egyptian who helped forge the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel;
- Because the United Nations has done little to protect Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina;
- Because the Security Council authorized the Gulf War against Iraq;
- To highlight a real or imagined grudge from the Middle East.
U.N. security officials were warned long ago that Boutros-Ghali, a Coptic Christian with a Jewish wife, could be a target for terrorists at a time when Muslim extremists are attacking Christians and police in Egypt and seeking to overthrow the country's secular government.
He, like his predecessor, is driven in an armored limousine.
Law enforcement officials said the eight men who were arrested in the alleged scheme Thursday also conspired to bomb the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and the Federal Office Building.
A newspaper report said they planned to assassinate Boutros-Ghali, among other public figures, but agents wouldn't confirm that.
On Friday, Boutros-Ghali was in Egypt to attend a summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity. He had no comment.
Chief U.N. Spokesman Joe Sills declined to comment on the case. Security officials refused to speak with the press. But privately, U.N. officials said the threat was frightening and that the 38-story Secretariat building could become a "guillotine" because of its glass facades.
About 4,000 people work in the U.N. headquarters itself, another 8,000 in neighboring U.N. buildings. The organization employs just over 200 security officers.
U.N. security has been tightened in recent years, especially since the bombing of the World Trade Center in February. U.N. officials acknowledged that the three-level U.N. parking garage could be a security problem.
Security officials for years have been seeking more funds and more sophisticated equipment, including radar, to protect the premises, which already have metal detectors and closed-circuit television.
Garage guards have been closely checking the identification of drivers and the permits of cars authorized to use the garage.
Over the years, U.N. security has been lax and assorted demonstrators and dissidents have managed to enter and at times make trouble, unfurling banners, shouting slogans, throwing eggs, even getting into fistfights.