It sounds like the ultimate Dog-Bites-Man story – ho hum, there’s the UN climbing into bed with yet another terror-linked outfit. Does it really matter?

You bet. Given the UN’s rapidly expanding resources and reach, and its proclivities for providing opaque, diplomatically immune conduits worldwide for men, materials, money and bad ideas, it actually does matter what the UN gets up to. For the case at hand, see the recent Fox News story headlined “UNICEF Partners With Islamic Charity Linked to Terror Groups” — this about UNICEF hooking up with a Saudi-based charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO, whose Philippine and Indonesian branches have been designated by the U.S. Treasury and the UN itself as terrorist entities linked to Al Qaeda. The article begins: “An Islamic Charity with ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban is now collaborating with an unlikely new partner: UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.”

There’s just one point on which I would disagree. There is nothing “unlikely” about this charity, the IIRO, collaborating with UNICEF. This same Saudi charity, the IIRO, already has ties to the UN. The IIRO has held consultative status  since 1995 with the UN General Assembly’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, or ECOSOC. It also partners with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — see pages 9 and 21– the kind of connection the UNHCR has particularly come to prize because of the potential for Saudi money — just search in this UNHCR document on “donor.”  The Saudis say there’s nothing wrong with the IIRO, and we can only hope they’re right — because once something takes root at the UN, it almost never goes away. Last year, Reps. Zach Wamp, Thaddeus McCotter, Scott Garrett, Cliff Stearns and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced a bill calling for the Secretary of State (see post below on Condi Rice, Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Fool) to withhold some U.S. taxpayer money from the UN’s ECOSOC “until such time as the UN and ECOSOC have withdrawn consultative status for all organizations with any affiliations to terrorist organizations.” The bill mentioned one organization by name, the IIRO. Results to date: IIRO, still involved with ECOSOC and the UNHCR, now teams up with UNICEF. Dog bites man. That can hurt.

Comments

In the UNDP welter (see post below) of botched and missing records, violations of the UN’s own rules, derelictions of duty, aid, comfort and dual-use procurement for a murderous totalitarian regime, and final gloss of UN immunity spread like a sheet of grease on top, have any of the UNDP officials involved paid a penalty?

Only the whistleblower who ended up without a job, and in that case, only in the opinions of some outside observers and, as expressed last summer, the UN’s own ethics office (which the UNDP rejected). The UNDP and its investigators suggest the whistleblower deserved what he got.

On another UN front, this from its “good governance” division, the Washington Times reports today on yet more UN impunity — “Report: UN Official Diverted Funds.” Maybe they should all hold a reunion with Benon Sevan on Cyprus. Heck, maybe they should set up an entire new UN agency and get taxpayer funding for it: “The Department of Innocent UN Officials.”

2 Comments

As ever, when the UN investigates itself and reports back, it’s been illuminating — on many levels, and not in a good way. First came the smoke machine. On the morning of Monday, June 2nd, the UN Development Program released the much-delayed report of its panel inquiring into the Cash-for-Kim scandal that erupted last year when the U.S. Mission questioned UNDP activities in North Korea. Following release of the report, the UNDP allowed reporters about two hours to speed-read the 353-page tome, and then at an abruptly scheduled 11 A.M. press conference, the head of the UNDP, Kemal Dervis, appeared to take questions and tell the press “We finally have some closure on the allegations made against UNDP.” With a few exceptions (as noted in my post of June 3), there followed a slew of immediate accounts, in which assorted speed-readers declared the scandal dead,  implied the UNDP and its top officials were blameless, and so forth.

But during the past week or so, some have actually been toiling through the report. This, I can tell you from firsthand experience, is no small endeavor. It is written in classic UN-ese. You can hear the gears grinding as the authors try to avoid any phrase that would impart actual meaning. It full of lines such as the following, from page 113:

“It was impossible to evaluate the appropriateness of these allocations as the total amount allocated and the allocation methods were not evident in the documentation reviewed.” (Translation: The UNDP records were such a heap of Swiss cheese that we don’t have a clue where the money went).

Now, from those who traversed the entire report and stayed awake to tell the tale, the real story is rolling in. Fox News came out Wednesday with an excellent account from George Russell, who has been all over this story from the beginning. Another account here.

Not only did the UNDP funnel millions in hard cash to Kim Jong Il’s regime, buy and ship into North Korea scores of dual-use items potentially helpful to Kim’s weapons programs, store counterfeit $100 bills in its office safe and savage the whistleblower who tipped off the U.S. to this UN version of “development.” In the long unfolding of the Cash-for-Kim saga, with its many subplots, it has become clear that the UNDP is a willing consort of rogue regimes, catering to their whims and — if confronted — wrapping itself in UN privilege and immunity. “Closure” –? Shades of Kofi Annan on Oil-for-Food: “If there was a scandal… .”  

1 Comment

Last month, when Condi Rice signed a memorandum of understanding with the Saudi foreign minister saying that America would help Saudi Arabia develop a nuclear program, I noted 15 reasons why this was a bad idea. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Rep. Ed Markey lists some more. In case you haven’t seen the MOU, here’s a copy, complete with a statement about addressing “the growing energy needs” in both countries, and the intention of America “to ensure reliable fuel supply for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” — nuclear fuel that is (assuming there’s room to cram it in between oil wells).

The MOU is signed by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, who along with Condi assures us that this is all leading to “development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear energy use in a manner that contributes to global efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.” He’s the same foreign minister who in this 2003 article translated by MEMRI (scroll down to June 23rd) assured us that now that Saudi Arabia has controls on its charities, “the possibility of these money (sic) reaching any illegal organization is non-existent.” (Good to know).

There are also provisions in the MOU for “exchange of scientific and technical information and documentation” and “exchange and training of personnel.” We can thank Condi, then, when Saudi nuclear experts visit our shores to share their expertise and impart the results of their skills?

4 Comments

It’s been a busy fortnight at the UN.

In response to the latest allegations of peacekeeper rape, in Haiti, Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire, a UN spokesman explained that the UN’s “zero tolerance” policy of such stuff is unrealistic – or, to put that in plainer English, if you want UN blue helmets, you’d better be ready to accept child rape as part of the package. In Rome, a UN food summit became a portal for appearances by Iran’s Mahmushroom-cloud Ahmadinejad (whose country is in nose-thumbing violation of three UN resolutions on its nuclear program, and who seized the chance to grandstand yet again about his desire for the destruction of Israel) and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe (Father of Famine in his own country), who was able to flout an EU travel ban thanks to the UN welcome wagon.

In New York, the UN Development Program –flagship agency of the UN – spun as an exoneration of its Cash-for-Kim activities in North Korea a much-delayed report which in fact details a host of ways in which the UNDP lends itself as a vehicle for exploitation by rogue states. Also in New York, the UN General Assembly, by acclamation, chose as its next president a former foreign minister of the brutal Soviet-lovin’ Sandinista era in Nicaragua, winner of the 1985 Lenin Prize, Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, with the monk-murdering regime of Burma to hold one of the 21 vice-presidential slots. In what sounds like a parody of UN-speak, Ban Ki-Moon’s deputy, Asha-Rose Migiro, welcomed d’Escoto’s “election,” saying that his “long and varied career” would — as paraphrased by the UN News Centre — “serve him well at the UN.” And, as the UN launches a $1.9 billion renovation of the New York headquarters from which it runs this ever-expanding empire, the NY City Controller was trying to collect millions in back-rent he says the UN Development Corporation has refused to pay.

This is the UN after what Ban Ki-Moon advertised as the new era of responsibility and transparency, after what Kofi Annan advertised as the sweeping reforms of 2005-2006, which followed the reforms of 2002, which followed the sweeping reforms of 1997. Which followed, well, you get the idea … does anyone see a problem here?

2 Comments

That hush around the UN yesterday morning was the press presumably speed-reading at the rate of about 175-pages per hour the 353-page UNDP-commissioned, UNDP-presented report reviewing the UNDP program for North Korea, which was shuttered last year after it made headlines with the Cash-for-Kim scandal (Kim, as in Kim Jong Il). Having given the press all of about two hours to absorb and digest the entire contents — in which the worst news, per UN tradition, was somehow buried deep in the report — the head of the UNDP, Kemal Dervis, appeared at 11 A.M. Monday at the UN briefing podium to handle questions, or dictate headlines, or however one cares to describe it.

Shouldn’t the investigators themselves have presented the report and taken questions? Nope. This is the UN. The trio who led the investigation, explained Dervis, prefer not to answer questions until the report has been presented to the UNDP Executive Board, due to meet later this month, not in NY (where the UNDP has its headquarters), but in Geneva.

 I’m still reading, with a growing sense of deja-oil-for-food-coverup. For a handy summary so far, here’s an editorial on Cash for Kim, Revisited, from today’s Wall Street Journal. More to come.

4 Comments