United Nations Special Representative Ad Melkert leaves following a meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the Shiite city of Najaf, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010. The United Nations says its chief envoy in Iraq is unharmed after his convoy was bombed following a meeting with the nation's top Shiite cleric.(AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani)
BAGHDAD — The chief U.N. envoy to Iraq narrowly escaped unharmed in a bombing that hit his convoy Tuesday after a meeting with the nation's top cleric about ways on how to unsnarl Iraq's stalemated government.
Officials have long worried that the political impasse that has gripped Iraq for more than seven months may lead to violence, and the attack on U.N. Special Representative Ad Melkert underscored those fears.
The U.N. has had a scaled-back presence in Iraq after a 2003 bombing of its Baghdad headquarters killed then-envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 employees. But its staff have stubbornly persisted in helping Iraq untangle political crises and other hot-button issues as an international force that remains committed to the country as the U.S. military
begins to leave.