It would be a pity if between the election coverage and the Saddam verdict, one of the most concise, on-target prescriptions for UN reform were to slip through the cracks. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security, sent a four-page letter Friday to UN Secretary-General Elect Ban Ki-Moon. In it, Coburn urges and explains in brief such vital steps as eliminating the UN’s secretive trust funds and other unaccountable slush pools; genuinely opening the opaque budgetary books; holding the UN Secretary-General and other officials to the functions actually allotted to them in the UN charter; delegitimizing rather than dignifying tyrants; and releasing to the public the archives of the Oil-for-Food investigation, which Paul Volcker and Kofi Annan between them have kept secret– thus covering up information about a great many questions still unanswered. You can read Coburn’s letter here.
Meanwhile, Some Great Ideas for a UN Cleanup
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Claudia Rosett is widely recognized as a ground-breaking reporter on corruption at the United Nations. Her investigative reporting skills, drawn from three decades as a journalist covering international affairs, led her to expose the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, the worst financial fraud in the history of humanitarian relief. Ms. Rosett worked from 1984-2002 as a staff editorialist, editor and reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and has appeared before six U.S. House and Senate Committees and Subcommittees to testify on subjects including U.N.-related corruption and the Iran-North Korea strategic alliance. Her work on Oil-for-Food earned Claudia the 2005 Eric Breindel Award and the Mightier Pen award, and for her on-site coverage of China's Tiananmen Square in 1989, she won an Overseas Press Club Citation for Excellence. She is a Foreign Policy Fellow with the Independent Women's Forum, and writes a column on foreign affairs for Forbes.com.
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