Secretary-General's impromptu remarks at UN Candlelight Vigil

We are gathered here because of what happened yesterday. And I think it is fitting that we take the time to mourn our dead; it is essential. These are wonderful colleagues and friends, who went to Iraq with only one mission: To help the Iraqi people restore their country, to help them bring about peace, to help stabilize Iraq. They were killed in a brutal, senseless way which none of us can understand.

I know all of us, for years to come, will remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. Sometimes it seems as if it were a dream, and we would wake up; I wish it were. But I think the best way to honour our colleagues who are dead, and those who are wounded, and those who are trapped with the trauma they went through in Baghdad, is to continue the work they had begun, is to focus on that mission with the clear determination to do what we are in Iraq to do. That is the best way to honour them and make sure their death has not been in vain.

For the moment, let's mourn our colleagues. And it is wonderful that, as a family, we come together and take the time to mourn them. It is not only those in Iraq. Our other colleagues around the world have also encountered similar situations. But this is the first time the UN has been attacked so aggressively in the history of this Organization. Those who did it, I hope, will be brought to account. As I said earlier this morning, I don't know which God they pray to, and what their cause is. What they have done will neither serve their cause nor their God.

So let us keep our friends in our memory, and pray for them, and I hope their souls will rest in peace. Thank you very much.