Why would a UN official care about democracy?

The chief of the U.N. Electoral Assistance Division, Carina Perelli, was asked in a press conference about reports that American troops helped Iraqi officials distribute information on the electoral process to Iraqi citizens, and encouraged them to participate in Sunday's vote.

Ms. Perelli said that U.N. officials spent time "asking, begging military commanders precisely not to do that," but the time has not been well—spent. The Americans were "overenthusiastic in trying to help out with these elections," she said. "We have basically been saying they should try to minimize their participation because this is an Iraqi process."

At the same time, she acknowledged that the U.N. itself is "not happy" with the way information on the election was disseminated. There are 22 U.N. election experts stationed in Baghdad as part of an international group of 40 election workers advising the Iraqi Independent Electoral Commission, she said.

American officials scoffed at the criticism. "There are 150,000 U.S. troops as part of the coalition in Iraq, who are there to do a number of things but primary among them is to help the Iraqis hold their own election," Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable told The New York Sun. He acknowledged Americans helped distribute information on voter registration, but added that it was done at the Iraqi Electoral Commission's request.

Ed Lasky   1 27 05

Richard Welz adds some further analysis:

A Slip of the UN Tongue
 
In a statement largely left unreported by the mainstream press, a UN spokesperson, Carina Perelli, provided a broad clue to the organization's true aims in the upcoming Iraqi elections.
 
Having failed miserably more often than not since its founding in 1945 in its primary purpose of keeping the world peaceful, one of the few actual 'accomplishments' to which the Turtle Bay behemoth likes to point pridefully is its occasional role in organizing supervising elections in such remote areas of the world as Namibia (formerly South West Africa) which do not have a tradition or procedure for doing so on their own.
 
With respect to Iraq, of course, the UN turned tail and pulled its entire staff out after a terrorist bombing killed one of its high—level officials. Nevertheless, it subsequently managed to nail enough of its courage to the sticking point to allocate some 22 'election experts' as part of an international advisory group concerned with Sunday's Iraq vote.
 
What 22 hapless bureaucrats can do is debatable, but the one thing they cannot possibly do is get out the vote — in the face of insurgents determined to disrupt and deter — the way tens of thousands of US troops can. Which makes it all the more remarkable that the chief of the UN Electoral Assistance Division, Carina Perelli, complained at a press conference in Iraq that the Americans were conducting  an 'overenthusiastic' campaign to encourage Iraqi citizens to participate in the election. UN officials, she said, had been 'asking, begging, military commanders precisely not to do that.'
 
Her objections, it turns out, were to reports that American troops had been helping Iraqi officials distribute information on the electoral process and encouraging them to participate in Sunday's balloting. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable acknowledged to a New York Sun reporter that Americans had, indeed, helped distribute voter registration information; and Iraq's UN Ambassador, Samir Sumaiddaie, told CNN that inasmuch as the troops did not try to influence the outcome or promote any particular candidate, he saw nothing wrong with their activities.
 
Why, then, is the UN — doing so little itself with the handful of people it is willing to assign to the election — so angry at the US efforts to encourage voter registration and participation?
 
The answer is inadvertently provided by Ms. Perelli herself, in her statement, reported by the New York Sun,  that Iraqis 'will have to decide by themselves whether they consider that the election is important enough, is valid enough, is legitimate enough in order to risk their lives to go and vote.'
 
She surely didn't mean to, but Perelli certainly made it abundantly clear what the official UN line is about the coalition effort to bring some semblance of democracy and a modicum to the land once ruled the globe's most vicious despot.