Amman - The UN Children's Fund plans to return to Baghdad "gradually" so that its offices there would be re-opened within a few months, the agency's Executive Director Ann M Veneman said Wednesday.

"Some of our senior officials will leave Amman in the coming few months and the rest of employees will leave for Baghdad gradually," Veneman was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.

However, she said Amman would remain "the most suitable site for UNICEF's regional bureau that covers the Middle East and North Africa, despite pressures put on the agency to shift its regional headquarters to another place."

UNICEF and other UN agencies left Baghdad for Amman on August 19, 2003, after the UN headquarters in the Iraqi capital was targeted by a fatal suicide bombing. (dpa)