Iraq's Health Ministry will no longer give death toll data to the United Nations, jeopardizing a vital source of information on the impact of the fighting there, UN officials have said.
Ashraf Qazi, who heads the UN assistance mission in Iraq, has cabled headquarters in New York to say that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office had instructed the Health Ministry to no longer give him mortality data, they said.
Instead, the data would come from the prime minister's communications director, a change that could politicize the figures. The shift in policy was first reported the Washington Post.
UN chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said he would not comment on leaked internal cables but the world body "has enjoyed excellent cooperation" with the Health Ministry.
"We very much hope that co-operation will continue," he said, adding that the UN mission was discussing the matter with the government.
Finding reliable data about deaths has been a challenge in Iraq. The UN mission has been obtaining figures for its periodic reports to the Security Council from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue.
But morgue officials said earlier this month they had been ordered to stop giving out such data.
US military commanders have said they are sceptical of data from the Health Ministry, which is controlled by supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The death toll figures in UN reports have fed US election-year fears that the George W. Bush administration has floundered in the face of soaring violence in the country invaded by a US-led coalition in March 2003.