United Nations Report

Recent years have brought a cascade of scandals at the United Nations, of which the wholesale corruption of the Oil-for-Food relief program in Iraq has been only the most visible. We still do not know the full extent of these debaclesthe more sensational ones include the disappearance of UN funds earmarked for tsunami relief in Indonesia and the exposure of a transnational network of pedophiliac rape by UN peacekeepers in Africaand we may never know. What we do know is that an assortment of noble-sounding efforts has devolved into enterprises marked chiefly by abuse, self-dealing, and worse.

NICOSIA, Cyprus--"Medium or sweet?" asks Benon Sevan. He is inquiring how much sugar I would like in the Turkish coffee he's boiling up for us on his kitchen stove, and I am torn between thanking him for his hospitality and wondering if he might poison the refreshments. For the past three years, we have had a somewhat fraught connection, via a shared interest in the biggest corruption scandal ever to hit the United Nations--he as a star suspect, and I in writing about it. So when, together with a traveling companion, I paid a surprise visit on a recent Sunday afternoon to Mr. Sevan's current home--here in the capital of his native Cyprus--I really had little hope that he would do anything but slam the door on me.

NEW YORKİ—İUnited Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has just tabled ostensibly radical proposals for reform, at a proposed cost of more than $510 million, saying he aims to bring efficiency, high ethical standards and above all, transparency to his scandal-tarnished organization.

By Joseph Klein
Monday, March 13, 2006

The United Nations is presently operating under a six month spending cap approved last December, which will be lifted only if and when Kofi Annan determines that sufficient managerial reforms have been put into place. These reforms would include new international accounting standards, a review and sun setting of old programs, more streamlined hiring and firing procedures to create a culture of meritocracy rather than political patronage and nepotism, and an effective financial oversight office.

 In an openly biased statement issued today, the United Nations, apparently run by a collection of anti-Western influences, has warned that Israel and the West could unleash chaos by withholding aid to the Palestinians once the transition of power to Hamas has been completed.

By Joseph Klein
Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The Islamic campaign against free speech continues to pick up steam. With the backing of the visiting High Representative of the European Union for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Mr. Javier Solana, and of a visiting Russian delegation, the Permanent Representatives of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Member States convened at the OIC Headquarters in Jeddah on February 14, 2006 to approve the following five points (emphasis added):

It's bad enough that North Korea's Kim Jong Il is starving his people while building nuclear bombs. But why are we helping him?

DESPITE FREQUENT DECLARATIONS OF REFORM, it seems that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has learned nothing from the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food scandal, in which Saddam Hussein's billions corrupted the U.N.'s entire Iraq embargo bureaucracy.

At 11:23 p.m. he fired off an e-mail to a food service executive named Andy Seiwert, and by the next morning, something close to panic appeared to be spreading through some of the offices at Eurest Support Services (ESS), a company that is now deeply embroiled in the multibillion-dollar United Nations procurement scandal.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, the United Nations Development Program promoted its plan to rule the world through a global socialist economic system.  The plan is detailed in a book entitled The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, published by Oxford University Press.

Here is the link to the entire transcript of the 1/26/06 UN daily briefing from which the excerpt below was taken. Click Here

26/01/2006 UN SECRETARY-GENERAL Spokesman's Noon Briefing Department of Public Information

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by St»phane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Question: Does the Secretary-General consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization?

UNITED NATIONS  How bad is the still expanding scandal in the United Nations' multi-billion-dollar procurement division? Based on a still-secret internal investigation, the answer is: for the U.N., it is just as bad as the gigantic Oil-for-Food debacle or maybe worse.

In the ever-more-amazing United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, the arrest in Houston last Friday of South Korean businessman Tongsun Park brings us a step closer to understanding the origins of the largest humanitarian fraud in U.N. history. Not least, Park may be able to provide some answers to questions surrounding one of the top former U.N. officials with whom Park had dealings the godfather of the Kyoto treaty, former potentate of the Canadian-power industry, and longtime eminence of U.N. policy, 76-year-old Canadian Maurice Strong.

In a telling moment at a United Nations press conference Wednesday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan lost his temper hurling insults at a widely respected senior member of the U.N. press corps. Beyond the who-what-when-where-how of this episode, the big question is: Why?

Republicans back US Ambassador John R. Boltons threat to halt UN budget move unless the UN "adopts reforms," according to The Washington Times Stephen Dinan.

Paul Volcker's findings on Oil for Food have been widely received as the final word on the United Nations relief program for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Far from it--as Mr. Volcker himself has admitted. In reporting that Saddam, along with his smuggling and oil graft, diverted $1.8 billion in kickbacks from U.N.-approved relief contracts under the program, Mr. Volcker underestimates, quite probably by billions, the amount the U.N. allowed Saddam Hussein and many of his favored business partners to graft out of Oil for Food deals for goods such as oil parts, milk, laundry soap and baby food. In low-balling the total, Mr. Volcker understates the negligence of the U.N., and overlooks some of the most potentially virulent links in Oil for Food.

NEW YORK  After the epic disaster of Oil for Food, one might imagine the United Nations would tread carefully before launching any new and controversial efforts. Hardly.

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