UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Beleaguered U.N. chief Kofi Annan (news - web sites) will serve out his final two years in office, and his early departure would be widely viewed as a "political assassination," his new chief of staff said on Thursday. Mark Malloch Brown, himself under fire from staff for a wave of top personnel changes and some botched early moves, also defended his own performance since moving into Annan's office from the U.N. Development Program in early January. "Inevitably we are just in the phase where people have seen trees coming down. But they haven't seen new trees...
