When the history of the last stand the Baath Party diehards comes to be written, the attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad will almost certainly be seen as their major mistake.

Of course they have no love for the United Nations, the source of the sanctions which emasculated the Iraqi state after its armies had been driven from Kuwait. Yet in fact the UN-sponsored economic embargoes and controls meant that it was the ordinary Iraqi, not the Baathist leadership, that suffered, and in a time of shortage, they gave the Saddam regime even more leverage and control over its cowed population.

What probably decided the Saddam loyalists upon this deadly attack was last week’s Security Council resolution in New York which endorsed the recently formed Governing Council and also approved the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI). Saddam’s people undoubtedly took both moves as legitimizing the arrangements put in place by the US occupation forces. This turned the UN Baghdad headquarters in the lightly protected former Canal Hotel into a target. The sheer magnitude of the attack and the fact that among the murdered was the UN’s special representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has guaranteed that this outrage will be seen as a challenge to the whole international community, including those countries who always doubted and indeed still doubt the wisdom of the US-led Iraqi invasion.

But these opponents of Washington’s actions have taken the view that what is done is done and the invasion cannot be reversed. Now it is the duty of all men of good will, via the UN, to do what they can to assist Iraq back to stability and full sovereignty. The largely humanitarian focus of the UN presence, quite separately from the coalition forces, was aimed at easing the distress of ordinary Iraqis, rebuilding a civil society at every level from public health and education to the removal of mines and unexploded ammunition. Now, after the blast, the UN can no longer operate at arm’s length from the occupying powers. Countries which have disagreed with Washington’s belligerent Iraqi policy have only one choice, whole-hearted commitment — commitment not simply to the reconstruction of Iraq but to the eradication of Saddam’s supporters.

The United Nations can no more walk away from the people of Iraq than the coalition forces themselves. With their Baghdad headquarters in ruins and the leader of their Iraqi mission slain, there is going to be no more UN attempt to stand back from the conflict. George W. Bush’s campaign to involve the more countries in suppressing the Baathist resistance in Iraq has probably just become a whole lot easier. For the killers, the UN blast was an own goal.