EU Referendum

At any given time there is one particular extremely unpleasant dictatorship around that is the flavour of the month in the negative sense. It is always being criticized by governments and, above all, transnational organizations. The idea is, one assumes, to be able to respond to those critics who point out unpleasant and inconvenient truths: while every tranzi organization worth its salt and the huge amounts of money poured into it produces many reports about the misdeeds (real or imagined) of Israel and the United States (it used to be the UK as well when we had IRA terrorists in prison), the real bloodthirsty dictators are welcomed with open arms.

The flavour of the month is Belarus. Don't get me wrong. It is a terribly run country with President Lukashenka doing everything he can to destroy free political life, fee media and free economic activity. Whether that makes him worse than, let us say for the sake of argumetn, President Putin is a moot point.

According to Der Spiegel Belarus had been headed off from a seemingly certain position on the UN Human Rights Commission during the election of 14 new members voted for in the General Assembly.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, the East European group submitted only two nominations for the two positions: Slovenia and Belarus. Various human rights groups then campaigned to have another candidate, Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose human rights record is not too bad at the moment. Slovenia won and the other two had a run-off. Bosnia won and Belarus is out, which allows the UN preen itself after the curious incident of Zimbabwe becoming the chairman of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

There is only one problem. Well, more than one, actually. The other members of the UN Human Rights Commission elected this week: Angola, Bolivia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Italy, Madagascar, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Qatar, and South Africa.

Are we to assume that countries like Angola, Egypt or Qatar have human rights records that qualify them for the UNHRC?

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Labels: UN

A report from Der Spiegel tells us that there is something of a froideur between those two important members of the great transnational fraternity, the United Nations and the European Union.

It would appear that the EU is dissatisfied with the UN's draft document on sustainable development, a concept that has so far eluded definition:

"The European Union deeply regrets that the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was unable to agree on an ambitious text on energy, climate, air pollution and industrial development," EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas and German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a joint statement Saturday.

Something to do, perhaps, with the developing countries not liking to be tied down by the developed ones.

That is not all. The European Union, which is considerably less stern on the issue of Zimbabwe than Der Spiegel makes out, nevertheless, is unhappy about the fact that Francis Nhema, that country's environment minister, has just been elected to be chairman of the UN's Sustainable Development Commission.

Zimbabwe under its present government has gone from being Africa's most productive economy to a place of complete collapse and famine in several parts. Mr Nhema himself is reported to have wrecked the farm he was generously awarded by President Mugabe. Seems to me that he is the most appropriate candidate for the post.

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Labels: UN

It seems that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the organization that is dedicated, at our expense, to keeping Palestinians in refugee camps for generations, has not been entirely successful with the various organizations in Gaza.

As Al-Jazeera reports:

Armed men have opened fire and thrown grenades near a children's festival at a UN-operated elementary school in the southern Gaza Strip, killing a local Fatah leader's bodyguard and wounding seven people.

It seems at the moment that by some miracle the children were not injured, though I doubt if any of this activity provides them with a happy and contented childhood.

This was not just another attack in the never-ending civil war in Gaza (the civil war that dare not call its name if most of the western media is anything to go by). It was a definite statement of disgust with the school and UNRWA's activity.

According to Majed Abu Shamaleh, the Fatah officila whose bodyguard was killed:

The group had apparently announced that any festivities held where girls and boys mixed, showed dissent against Islam.

Abu Shamaleh said they had issued a warning on Saturday in which they blamed the UN for "turning people away from Islam."

The men had said John Ging, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Gaza, was "at the head" of an alleged movement to weaken people's faiths.

Abu Shamaleh said the shooting appeared to have been carried out by the same group who had been behind a string of bombings of internet cafes and pool halls in Gaza.

Well, this blog has a solution. Disband UNRWA (yes, of course, getting rid of the UN would be an even better idea but we must have one thing at a time). That way they will not be able to do anything about weakening people's faith. Just to make sure that nothing like that happens, stop all aid money going to Gaza.

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Labels: Gaza, middle east, UN

One of my great heroes is Whittaker Chambers, not just because he managed to bring down some of that self-satisfied, arrogant, treacherous group of which the various Hisses were such a prominent section, but because his actions had a logic that escaped fellow travellers.

He joined the Communist Party and, later, became a secret member of it because he believed that these were the people who could bring about the world he wanted. When he realized that, in actual fact, Communists created a far worse world, he left, deep wrench though it was for him to do so, and fought the good fight against them.

In his book, "Witness", which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who wants to understand the twentieth century, he describes a conversation with the daughter of a professor who had left the Party. It was, the young woman explained, because one day he heard a scream in the night. He heard the scream of all those being dragged away to prison, all those tortured, all those killed. Chambers explains his own "apostasy" in the same way - he, too, heard the scream in the night.

Now, thanks to Michelle Malkin, Fausta, Gateway Pundit and other bloggers, we can hear a scream in broad daylight. It's the scream of a woman being dragged into a police car by no less than four rather burly males (brave aren't they?), members of the Morality Police, who are cracking down on all those who are inappropriately dressed.

This applies to women who refuse cover themselves up completely from head to toe, to men, who are sporting vaguely western fashions and even to mannequins, as Fausta shows.

Who will hear that scream? The left-wing feminists who cannot imagine a system worse than Bush's presidency (which is, oddly enough, very similar to all other presidencies)? The UN, perhaps? Well, errm, no.

In fact, the UN's latest report on the state of women's rights, the UN, to the complete lack of surprise among us, seasoned UN-watchers, criticized only one country. Well, have a guess. Saudi Arabia? Nope. Sudan for its behaviour to women in Darfur? Nope. Pakistan, perhaps, for honour killings? Nope, wrong again. Give up. OK, I'll tell you. It's Israel.

Well, OK, you might argue that women in Israel, Jewish, Arab, Druze and others, seem to be remarkably free to do what they like doing. But, hey, have you thought what the "occupation" does to Palestinian women? Not as much as the treatment of Palestinian women by Palestinian men does in a society where honour killings (or, in plain English, murder, often preceded by torture) is considered to be a minor crime. Of course, they do acknowledge equality in one respect. Indeed, the women get priority in this; suicide/homicide bombing.

In the meantime, the women of Iran can scream their heads off.

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Labels: blogs, Iran, UN

First, the good news. Well, I think it is good news, though we have not heard the average Darfurian’s opinion on this. The People’s Daily reports that:

UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes stressed here Monday that humanitarian efforts in western Sudanese region of Darfur would continue despite difficulties.

During a press conference following his conclusion of one-week visit to Sudan, he told the reporters that "humanitarian efforts undertaken over the past three years are to be considered an extraordinary success giving the scale of the Darfur problem."

The trouble with all these statements is that there is no verification. Given the scale of the Darfur problem and given that all we hear about is the various horrors, what exactly is “an extraordinary success”? The simple existence of aid workers in the area? Surely that is anything but a success, as they are actually consumers of resources.

What is it the UN humanitarian efforts have achieved? Apparently, as in Iraq, they have become targets of attacks by various groups and militias, as well as encountering “practical difficulties relating to travel permits, visas, labor law and so on”. In fact, it sounds as if most of the efforts the UN expands in Sudan has to do with the aid workers themselves.

While we are on the subject of the UN, we have an update on the preposterous UN Human Rights Council, which as Reuters says with a straight face, was “launched last year to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission”.

Its 47 members has accepted a recommendation from a five-country working group, one of whose members is that shining beacon of human rights, Zimbabwe, that Iran and Uzbekistan should “be removed from the so-called 1503 procedure under which accusations of violations are discussed in closed-door, confidential sessions”.

Apparently, this is in line with the view of the majority of states on the Council that individual states should not be singled out for critical attention. Then who should? What exactly is the Human Rights Commission going to do if not raise the subject of human rights in various countries? Silly me, it is going to criticize the United States and Israel, just as its predecessor used to do.

None of this would matter if we did not have to pay rather a large amount of money for this malarkey.

Perhaps it would matter less if the UN and its Human Rights Council actually managed to look a little more seriously at its complete failure to do anything but criticize the United States and Israel, ignoring many millions of victims all over the world.

However, as this posting by Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs shows, when UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer dares to tell the truth, he is abused and threatened by the Council president, Luis Alfonso de Alba, who informs us all that any similar comments will, in future, be struck from the record.

Watch the recording if you can.

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Labels: UN

Both the story and the punning title come from one of our readers. He knows who he is and we are duly grateful.

The story, as related by AP (I think they must have got this right as there was precious little digging to be done), concerns the head of the UN intellectual property agency, (World Intellectual Property Organization or WIPO) whose understanding of matters intellectual does not extend to being accurate about his age or, as it happens, qualifications.

Kamil Idris joined the agency in 1982, when the job he got required ten years of professional experience, clearly unlikely in the case of somebody in his twenties. But that did not matter as Mr Idris gave his date of birth as 1945, which would have made him 37. He also gave various rather interesting details of his qualifications and experience. None of these seem to have been checked up.

In 1997 he became director-general of the agency, which oversees world copyrights and trademarks.

Last year, however, Mr Idris suddenly noticed the mistake in his age and changed it to a younger one, assuring all and sundry that he was actually born in 1954. The internal auditor found this a little too difficult to stomach.

The audit said that by changing his age to the younger, Idris could "considerably benefit" by further building up U.N. pension credits before eventual retirement.

The audit also says the change could benefit Idris if he leaves soon because it would make him eligible for a severance payment that could be worth several hundred thousand dollars. The previous age would have made him 60 in 2005 and no longer eligible for severance if he left after that point.

All of which must be a complete coincidence. Needless to say, WIPO is defending the boss, pointing out that he corrected the mistake as soon as he noticed it, which took him well over twenty years but he had other matters on his mind. In any case, this is all about racism.

The new birth date raises questions of what Mr Idris was actually doing in the years before he joined the UN, something that ought to have been checked at the time of his joining but clearly was not.

According to the new birth year, Idris would have been 13 years old when he claimed to have held his first part-time and full-time posts at the national level in Sudan.

"Mr. Idris explained that these were temporary jobs that he assumed since his young age, in order to sustain his family and enable him to study," the report says.

He said in his application that, when he was 23, he was deputy director of the legal department in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry from 1977 to 1978. But at the same time, he was studying at Ohio University nearly 7,000 miles away in the United States.

Idris' 1982 application said he obtained a masters degree in international law from Ohio University in 1978. But Jessica Stark, spokeswoman for the university, told the AP Idris attended from Sept 12, 1977, to June 10, 1978, when he received a Master of Arts in African Studies.

Adding to the confusion, the audit said Idris registered at the university with a third birth date - August 26, 1953, a year earlier than the revised date.

Mr Idris appears to be incommunicado and WIPO tells all and sundry that the actual audit cannot be released as it is confidential. Given that we employ these crooks through our taxes (yes, they can sue if they like), I am not convinced confidentiality is quite what is required here.

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Labels: UN

When in doubt, have a look at what the UN and other tranzis are up to. Bound to find something entertaining there. Yes, yes, I know it is akin to shooting fish in a barrel but, occasionally, that is such fun.

Then again, it is important to recall that these organizations cost us a lot of money, which they tend to use to try to undermine democratic nation states. So, keeping a weather eye on them is of some importance.

First up, as ever, is the United Nations, now under new management and not a whit better for that.

It seems that UN peacekeeping troops will not be sent to Chad because the situation there is too volatile. Undoubtedly so, but I was under the impression that it is the peacekeepers’ job to ensure that the situation gets less volatile. I suppose, that would be called peacemaking.

The two SecGens have differed on what ought to be done.

Unlike his predecessor, Ban made no recommendation on whether the council should deploy a U.N. peacekeeping force to Chad and neighboring Central African Republic to help thousands of civilians caught in local fighting and the spillover of Sudan's Darfur conflict.

In one of his final reports, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended against deploying peacekeepers to the two countries until all parties agree to a cease-fire and start talks aimed at a political solution. He cited the risk to troops and very difficult logistics.

There is a risk, said Ban Ki-moon, the new SecGen that the UN troops will be seen as interfering with the military agenda of the various groups, particularly Chadian rebels, based in Sudan and, therefore, legitimate targets for attack. And there I was thinking that it is only the evil Americans and British who could find themselves in such a situation.

Ban stressed that a lasting solution to the crisis in both countries depends on their leaders. He urged the governments "to move forward rapidly and to muster the political will and establish peace and stability in their countries and in the region."

Meanwhile, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, a sensible website that, nevertheless, suffers from an idea that somehow the UN can be reformed and improved, published and editorial piece in the New York Sun.

In it he takes on Jeffrey Laurenti, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a former adviser to Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation, who finds the make-up of the “new” UN Human Rights Council, still packed with countries who would not recognize human rights if they met them in the street.

"The biggest institutional overhaul to emerge from outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan's U.N. reform drive," wrote Mr. Laurenti, "was the upgrading of the policy body overseeing human rights to a yearround Council, four-fifths of whose members are bona fide democracies; the Council's nation-specific focus on war-fighting excesses by Israel and Sudan, however, offended the West and Islamists respectively."

As Mr Neuer says, “never have so few words on a U.N. subject managed to convey so much misinformation”.

Firstly, it is not exactly accurate to say that the body has been upgraded. It may meet more often than its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights met but, so far, it has not even censured a single country with abysmal human rights record. Even the Commission managed to odd censure.

Secondly, Mr Laurenti shows himself to be part of the problem as he equates Israel’s defence against Hamas and Hezbollah attacks with the mass murder, torture, rape and ethnic cleansing that are being conducted by the janweed militias in Darfur with the full approval of the Sudanese government.

Instead, the council so far has devoted 100% of its condemnations — three special sessions and eight resolutions — to one-sided attacks against Israel, granting immunity to Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism. The world's major Western democracies, Mr. Annan, and even harsh critics of Israel like Amnesty International have decried the council's politically motivated bias.

How bad were these condemnations if former SecGen Kofi Annan and Amnesty International have decried them?

Then there is the question of the bona fide democracies that, according to Mr Laurenti, make up the Council. Of course, a body that deals with human rights ought to be made up entirely of bona fide democracies and countries where the rule of law is paramount but even four fifths would be an achievement if it were true.

These are the 47 members:

Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Finland, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Tunisia, Brazil, France, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Japan, Mali, Pakistan, Peru, Republic of Korea, Romania, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Zambia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Jordan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Switzerland, Uruguay

A mixed batch, to put it mildly. According to Freedom House’s annual survey about half the members of the Council do not meet the basic standards of full democracy.
So, where does this assessment of four fifths come from? This is Mr Neuer’s idea:

He [Jeffrey Laurenti] apparently refers to the fact that 37 council members have signed on to the Community of Democracies, a loose association of over 100 countries, membership to which requires little. Under Mr. Laurenti's definition, "bona fide democracies" include Bahrain, Bangladesh, Jordan, Morocco, and Vladimir Putin's Russia — regimes that jail journalists, trample basic freedoms, or commit systematic torture.

The Community of Democracies is an interesting organization, since, at times, it has been suggested as an alternative to the severely discredited United Nations. Set up in Poland in 2000, its Council’s “mission statement” is as follows:

CCD is different from the many NGOs that promote democracy. We believe that an environment of cooperation among nations offers the best hope for resolving the critical problems of our age and that an organization of democracies acting in concert is a vital step in that direction. What distinguishes us is that CCD is the only nongovernmental organization in the world with an exclusive focus on the Community of Democracies. We believe that an effective way to consolidate the gains of democratic expansion is by strengthening that Community. We view this effort, which includes the creation of a Democracy Caucus in the UN, as a means toward our long-range goal -- consolidating democracy globally by constructing an enduring framework enabling democracies to act in concert on the issues of concern to mankind.

A good deal of it makes sense, though one cannot help wondering what a Democracy Caucus in the UN might achieve. Also, despite its desire to keep the international bureaucracy to a minimum, organizations and institutes seem to have been set up in various places.

The problem is, of course, the signatories to the original document that includes such democratic countries as Bangladesh, Haiti, Nigeria, Russia and Venezuela.

A secondary problem is the asserted principles of the organization, the first one being “our common adherence to the purposes and principles set forth in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” with only the fourth one mentioning “democratic values”.

The long list of democratic principles and practices are routinely ignored in several of the signatories and a large proportion of UN member states. For instance, does the Arab Republic of Egypt really uphold the principles of

The right of every person to freedom of opinion and of expression, including to exchange and receive ideas and information through any media, regardless of frontiers.

The right of every person to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Somehow, I find that hard to believe after yesterday’s news.

Labels: Community of Democracies, tranzis, UN

Zimbabwe’s President has banned all rallies in the country as they were disturbing the peace. His peace. The opposition has vowed to carry on and to organize more of them, though the last one had to be abandoned because of the police firing teargas. (Funny, isn’t it, there is always money for teargas, rubber and other kinds of bullets, guns and other suchlike inedible things.)

The economy has been completely destroyed and only aid is keeping people in many parts of the country alive. Though, naturally, a good deal of the aid gets skimmed in Harare by Mugabe, his friends and relations, especially his wife.

The EU has decided to renew its sanctions against Zimbabwe but as these were constantly broken and never really worked, one can ignore it.

Now David Blair of the Daily Telegraph tells us that the UN agency, World Food Programme, who has been so active in North Korea, may well elect Zimbabwe to its vice-presidency, a step towards future presidency.

It seems that the seven African countries on the executive board all favour President Mugabe’s candidacy. No doubt they think this will be an excellent present for the old tyrant on his 83rd birthday tomorrow.

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Labels: africa, UN, World Food Programme

To give the new SecGen of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, his due, he seems at first to have responded reasonably well to the latest UN scandal, the money passed on to North Korea'’s Kim Jong-il by the United Nations Development Programme without a great deal of supervision.

I wish I could say that it was this blog that did the trick but, I suspect, it was the probability of a prolonged campaign by the Wall Street Journal that encouraged Mr Ban to pronounce on the subject.

A week ago on Friday Mr Ban’s spokesman announced that the SecGen had met with Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the UNDP (what is he associated with, one wonders) and added:

The Secretary-General will call for an urgent, system wide and external inquiry into all activities done around the globe by the U.N. funds and programmes.

The key word, as the following Monday’s WSJ editorial pointed out, is “external”. We all remember how long it took the previous SecGen, Kofi Annan (father of Kojo and brother of Kobina) to set up the independent Volcker Commission to find out what has been going on in the Oil for Food scam. Admittedly he picked a man whom he had considered to be “reliable” to chair it but, alas, the report was not quite what SecGen Annan had wanted.

The UNDP announced in a letter, published in Monday’s WSJ, that it welcomes “an independent and external audit of our operations in North Korea”. In the same letter, readers were assured that

If the member states of the U.N. and UNDP’s board were to decide that our presence there were no longer useful, we would leave immediately.

Brave words. Unfortunately, one of the members of that board is North Korea itself (it also sits on the board of UNDP’s affiliate, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and if UNICEF as well as being a member of the UN Disarmament Conference. What are the chances of Kim Jong-il’s henchmen (for who else would be sent to negotiate on these august boards) agreeing that the UNDP and its hard cash were no longer wanted in North Korea? One of the many tales of porcine aviation that the UN is so fond of regaling us with.

Meanwhile, the UNDP is twisting and turning. In a press conference last Friday the same Ad Melkert dismissed the problem with the words:

We’re not talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. … Over a period of 10 years it is, of course, tens of millions.

Oh well, that’s all right then. Actually, the sum is $27.7 million and, indeed, it is chickenfeed compared to the Oil for Food scam.

There is a long piece on North Korea, the UN and various ramifications of the problem, both nuclear and humanitarian, here.

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Labels: aid, North Korea, UN

Another day, another UN scandal. This one is in its early stages. Well, no, the scandal has been going on for some time but its uncovery is in its early stages that are, as the Wall Street Journal points out, very reminiscent of the beginnings of what we have learnt to call the oil-for-food scam.

One lesson of Oil for Food, and its failure to lead to any serious reform, is that to some foreign policy elites there can be no such thing as a U.N. "scandal." That's because for them the U.N. is all about good intentions, and the hopes and dreams for peace, rather than about actual results. But it is precisely that forbearance that has allowed too many dictators to exploit the U.N. for their own purposes, and has brought Turtle Bay to its current low ebb. Getting to the bottom of Cash for Kim is one more chance to make the U.N. shape up, and to stop financing a global menace in the bargain.

Melanie Kirkpatrick gives some of the gruesome details in an article that is worth reading right through.

American officials have been pushing for some time for greater transparency in the activity, particularly the financial activity of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in North Korea. I am sure none of our readers will be too surprised at being told that the UNDP has been stonewalling.

In a Jan. 16 letter to UNDP Associate Administrator Ad Melkert, Ambassador Mark Wallace of the U.S. Mission to the U.N. lays out what American digging has found so far: The UNDP's program in the Democratic People's Republic "has for years operated in blatant violation of U.N. rules, served as a steady and large source of hard currency and other resources for the DPRK government with minimal or no assurance that UNDP funds and resources are utilized for legitimate development activities."

So what sort of sums are we talking about? Hard to tell, according to Ms Kirkpatrick:

While the precise amount of hard currency supplied through UNDP isn't known, the documents suggest it has run at least to the tens of millions of dollars since 1998 and one source says it could be upward of $100 million. An internal 1999 audit notes a budget of $27.9 million for 29 projects. David Morrison, a UNDP spokesman, says "the overall size of the program" in North Korea has been reduced in recent years. While $22.2 million was budgeted for 2005-2006, the agency spent only $3.2 million last year and $2.1 million in 2005, he says. Programs fall into four areas: humanitarian assistance, public health, environment and agriculture, and the economy.

Do we know at least what the money has gone on? Well, not really, as UN inspectors are not exactly welcome in North Korea.

A defense that the UNDP merely does humanitarian work--for the people of North Korea and not the government--isn't credible given the details exposed by Ms. Kirkpatrick. U.N. officials can't even say with confidence that all of the "development" projects exist because they haven't been allowed to visit their sites. Pyongyang officials insist on payments in cash that become fungible hard currency for the regime. Every U.N. dollar is one more that Kim doesn't have to raise from other (and often illegal) sources to pay off his generals or to buy a nuclear centrifuge.

In other words, the usual messy situation has developed under cover of which hard cash is handed over to a very nasty dictator to be used as he sees fit.

There is, Ms Kirpatrick emphasises, to date no evidence that any UN official has been taking bribes or behaving in an openly corrupt fashion. Of course, one cannot rule that possibility out but neither is it essential for our understanding of how Kim Jong-Il benefits from western “generosity” and the UN’s inability to live up to its own supposed principles.

It seems that the UNDP staff in Pyongyang consists almost entirely of North Koreans, all appointed by the government, whose salaries are not paid to them directly but through that very government. How much of it reaches the actual officials is unknown just as it is unknown what proportion of the funding reaches the people in need of help, that is most of North Korea’s population.

But who needs a checkbook? According to the same audit, cash is the only means of payment that the government accepts. The UNDP does not use purchase orders in North Korea and local purchases--including those over $1,000--are made in cash. That includes local office costs, which are typically provided in kind by the host country. North Korea even charges rent, to the tune of $2 million a year, according to one source who has looked at the program.

Meanwhile, there is little if any oversight of the UNDP's projects in North Korea, which, according to a U.N. document, numbered 30 last year. UNDP regulations require one official, on-site visit a year but since Pyongyang prohibits foreigners from visiting some of the project sites, that's another rule that's out the window. Audits of individual projects are spotty at best and in the case of "nationally executed" or "NEX" projects--that is, those run by the North Korean government with funds provided by the UNDP--they are often done by the government itself, giving new meaning to the adage about the fox running the henhouse.

Does the new SecGen Ban Ki-moon watch Laurel and Hardy films, I wonder. If he does he could quote Ollie Hardy's line to his predecessor Kofi Annan: "That's another fine mess you got me into."

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Labels: North Korea, UN

Benon Sevan, the former Chief of the UN’s Oil-for-Food scam … I mean, scheme … has been indicted in New York federal court for allegedly taking bribes under the scheme. The FBI, the US Attorney’s office and the Manhattan District Attorney have issued a press release to that effect.

According to the press release, Sevan allegedly received $160,000 generated from the sale of Iraqi oil under the program from one Ephraim Nadler, an associate who was also indicted, on behalf of the government of Iraq. The money was allegedly used to pay off overdue credit cards and bills.

Specifically, the two were charged with wire fraud, based on their depriving the United Nations of its right to Sevan's honest services; bribery concerning an organization — the United Nations that receives more than $10,000 annually from the federal government; and conspiracy to commit these offenses.

Mr Sevan, described by Fox News as a “career diplomat” but, really, a man who had worked his way through the UN for 40 years, is believed to be in Cyprus, with whom the United States does have an extradition treaty but it does not cover financial crimes.

Needless to say, Sevan’s lawyer is denying any wrong-doing:

"It is unfortunate that the Independent Investigative Committee [IIC] has succumbed to massive political pressure," Eric L. Lewis, a Washington-based lawyer, said in a written statement. "After eight months of investigation with more than 60 employees and a $30 million budget, the IIC needed to produce a 'smoking gun.' As Mr. Volcker has conceded, there is no smoking gun. Mr. Sevan never took a penny."

Claudia Rossett has a picture on her blog of the block of flats, Benon Sevan is supposed to be living in Nicosia though not the place where his aunt is supposed to have had her fatal accident.

Ms Rossett sums up the story so far in greater detail in her National Review column, in which she describes this development “as the single-most-promising United Nations reform effort to date”. Many more of this kind, say I.

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Labels: UN

According to RIA Novosti, the new SecGen of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon has put on Kofi Annan’s “heavy crown”. Well, indeed. Many of our readers will recall a certain Henry IV in Shakespeare’s plays of that name bemoaning the fact that “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”.

What the same readers might not know (though some others will) is that there is a very similar line in Pushkin’s historical play “Boris Godunov”. The latter, having been elected by the nobles to be tsar carries a heavy load of guilt because of the supposed murder of Ivan IV’s baby son, Dmitry (a dubious theory, historically speaking).

Thus, Boris not only sees visions of bloodied babies but cries out about the heaviness of the crown, that is “the cap of Monomakh”. Vladimir Monomakh was a mediaeval Great Prince of Rus, regarded as the progenitor of all subsequent ones. The crown of the Tsars of Muscovy and then of Russia is known as the cap of Monomakh. (Oh do keep up, will you.)

Well, what are we to call the crown Ban Ki-Moon has inherited, particularly as he did not have his predecessor murdered and, as far as we know, is not guilty of infanticide? The Coronet of Peace? Lacks something in realism? The Cap of Irresponsibility? Getting there.

Going on with the Novosti report, it would appear that the new SecGen has already found out that actually life may not be all that easy at the top of that particular greasy pole. Called upon by the High Panjandrum of the EU’s foreign policy, Javier Solana to send UN troops into Somalia (why now, one wonders, as if one didn’t know), Ban Ki-Moon has had to admit that actually he does not have the troops to send in. And, of course, we do not talk of the behaviour of those troops in the places they have been sent to.

All in all, the new boy has wasted no time in proving his anti-Americanism. While his first statement was more or less acceptable in that he went against UN “policy” and refused to denounce the execution of that martyr and mass murderer Saddam Hussein, things have been going downhill since.

He has, needless to say, called for the closure of Guantánamo Bay though not, strangely enough of all the many other prisons in Cuba where dissidents are thrown. Nor has he, equally strangely, called for the closure of North Korean prisons and concentration camps of Egyptian prisons that now house numerous bloggers.

He, too, has expressed his disquiet about the American attacks on Al-Qaeda in Somalia:

Notwithstanding the motives for this reported military action, the Secretary-General is concerned about the new dimension this kind of action could introduce to the conflict and the possible escalation of hostilities that may result," said Moon’s spokesperson Michele Montas during daily press briefing on Wednesday.

Possible escalation? Does this mean that the Somalian conflict was somehow dying down? Or that the Al-Qaeda honchos were interested in dampening that conflict? Or that the Islamists’ sharia law was somehow popular among anyone except western commentators who can always flee to the comforts of their home?

Biased BBC, incidentally, quotes evidence to show that the Beeb’s chief correspondent in Somalia is “a businessman supportive of the Islamic Courts, who is seen as partisan by opponents of the Courts”. What a surprise, eh? That is possibly why the BBC can put up articles about fear stalking the streets of Mogadishu, somehow omitting to mention the fear that may have stalked those streets before. Au contraire.

Such random attacks have created fear among the civilians who had enjoyed relative safety under the Islamists' six-month rule.

I must admit that even my jaw dropped when I read that, used though I am to the BBC’s little peculiarities. The same article says:

The advice from one and all is to get Ethiopian troops to withdraw from the country and replace them with African peacekeepers.

I assume this does not mean that the BBC does not realize that Ethiopians are Africans, too, but that they are talking about the African Union peacekeepers. One wonders who those advice-givers are and whether they recall the AU’s complete and utter failure in Darfur and Sudan in general.

So, Ban Ki-Moon is shaping up as another one of those hand-wringing weepers who hate those who try to do anything to solve the big problems more than those who cause those problems. No surprises there.

Meanwhile Claudia Rossett, already on the trail, has found an interesting little tit-bit about the new SecGen’s appointments. One of them is the Tanzanian Foreign Minister, Asha-Rose Migiro, who is to become Bam Ki-Moon’s deputy. Her qualifications? She has recently chaired a conference for the Great Lakes region of Africa.

That’s the official story, anyway. The less official one is that there were various deals done before the election of the new SecGen and Tanzania, for one, has demanded some payment for the vote – as well as the money South Korea has promised to disburse in largesse to kleptocratic rulers …. ooops, sorry, foreign aid.

Ms Rossett who is roundly abused in the comments section by some employee of the UN Foundation, also quotes an Iranian news item, which came to her via Russia and is not, therefore, absolutely reliable. According to this, Tanzania’s Foreign Minister Migiro has lined up with the Iranian Mullahs and supports the country’s right to have “peaceful” nuclear energy.

In return

The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to cooperate in various fields as investment, export of technical and engineering services to Tanzania, he [Iranian ambassador to Tanzania] underlined.

The Tanzanian energy minister, for his part, expressed satisfaction with the current level of relations with Iran and voiced his country's readiness to negotiate with Iranian companies active in construction of power plants.

Referring to the activities of Iran's Construction Jihad Bureau in Tanzania in the past, he welcomed reopening of the office in the country.

Well, never mind. The official line as expressed by that employee of the UN Foundation is that the appointment of Ms Migiro “can be considered a boon to the prospect of UN reform”. I can see that one being trotted out for all sorts of misdemeanours.

Labels: Ban Ki-moon, BBC, UN

AllahPundit and others are cautiously optimistic about the new SecGen of the UN, Ban Ki-moon. His reply to a question at a press conference indicates that he believes Saddam to have been a vicious thug and mass murderer and, possibly, deserving of the death sentence.

He also adds that whatever his private views are, capital punishment is for each member state to decide on. Of course, what he really means is that it is for the political elite of each member state to decide on, with added counter-inducements thrown in by such organizations as the European Union.

We shall watch the developments with interest but we maintain our basic position: individuals like Kofi Annan may be the pits in transnational politics but, in the end, it is the system that is the real problem.

To prove this, Al-Jazeera reports that Ban Ki-moon is finding himself in hot water by not coming out categorically against capital punishment. Italy, according to this report is starting an international drive for a complete ban (well, a complete ban by the UN and we all know what that is worth) on all executions.

On Sunday, Ashraf Qazi Jehangir, the UN special representative in Iraq, had released a statement saying that the world body "remains opposed to capital punishment, even in the case of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide".

In other words, the UN together with the EU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Italian government considers the lives of bloodthirsty mass murderers to be more valuable than those of their victims.

Labels: Ban Ki-moon, capital punishment, tranzis, UN

On the day the government forces in Somalia, backed by Ethiopia, ousted the Islamists from Mogadishu, the Daily Telegraph published a pontificating leader, entitled "The world must not ignore the Horn of Africa".

As the continuing catastrophe of the Horn of Africa means large numbers of migrants moving across the world, not ignoring the place and its problems could be described as rational self-interest. That is not how it was described by the leader writer of that esteemed newspaper. Instead, we had a good deal of waffle about how terrible things are in Somalia and how the government was unlikely to establish order, backed as it was by another country.

There was a reference to the American debacle with its Operation Restore Hope 14 years ago and a good deal of hand-wringing. The international community, according to the argument had not come up with a viable solution. Somebody, I suspect, had not looked at the map of the area or read even superficially about its history.

Curiously enough, several of the commentators insisted that the Islamic Courts were actually rather a good idea as they had imposed law and order, albeit Sharia law and order. One suspects, none of those people would like to live under the usually corrupt and unspeakably cruel Sharia law and order, but, hey, it’s good enough for those Africans.

What was the Telegraph's solution? Well, I expect, you have guessed it even if you did not read it at the time:

However, as argued above, their intervention may just as well leave a gaping power vacuum as create a platform for power-sharing talks. If the Somalis are to be rescued from the horrors of continuing anarchy, a neutral peacekeeping force will have to be deployed. For that, a UN mandate is required. The incoming Korean Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, should make Somalia the priority of his first months in office.

Nobody would pretend that restoring order in such a poverty-stricken, clan-based society will be anything but fiendishly difficult. But the identification of Somalia by Osama bin Laden as a potential launching-pad for terrorism precludes leaving it to its own factional devices. American intervention, both in the 1990s and more recently in support of business-backed militias challenging the Islamic courts in Mogadishu, soon proved counterproductive.

The same fate will befall the Ethiopian coup de main unless a UN-mandated force can rapidly be deployed. Even then, the chances of a political solution, perhaps between a reconstituted TFG and moderate elements in the courts, will remain slim. But it is well worth the try, and not merely in the interests of the region.

Fast forward several days and a new year, and what do we find? As my colleague has already pointed out, even more hand-wringing and calls for Ban Ki-moon to face up to the first great challenge: accusations of child rape and abuse by UN troops in southern Sudan. This is not Darfur we are talking about but the previous civil war with a great deal of atrocity on the part of government troops and militias directed against Christians and animists.

What surprised me this morning, if surprise is quite the right word in the circumstances of the new, improved Telegraph newspapers, was that they actually thought this was news.

It's not as if a number of blogs (and newspapers in the United States) have not written about UN abuses across the globe; it’s not as if Claudia Rossett had not conducted a dogged investigation into these many abuses. Do our journalists really believe that with the departure of that great and good man (according to most of them) Kofi Annan (father of Kojo and brother of Kobina) would miraculously change everything immediately?

To start with, as Claudia Rossett points out, Ban Ki-moon’s first job is to clear up the mess left behind by the sainted Kofi, unfortunately with the staff that was there under the latter and are, therefore, unlikely to want to do too much digging or too much clearing up. You never know what might crawl out of the woodwork. As for that Rossett woman … Just make sure she never gets a Pulitzer Prize for her journalism.

Secondly, there is a basic misunderstanding at the heart of the Telegraph’s analysis:

The reason that the UN so often behaves badly is, paradoxically, because so many people wish it well. Because the organisation embodies the loftiest of ideals – peace among nations – it tends to receive the automatic benefit of the doubt. We are so fond of the theoretical UN that we rarely drag our gaze down to the actual one. The UN has therefore fallen out of the habit of having to explain itself and, in consequence, become flabby, immobilist and often sleazy.

The reason, dear journalists, the UN behaves almost always badly is because its structure is in clear contradiction to its supposed principles and always has been.

Let me reiterate, just in case somebody from the MSM is reading this: the fact that the Soviet Union was made a permanent member of the Security Council from the very beginning, the fact that Ukraine and Byelorussia, republics within the USSR in the first of which an appalling though undiscussed civil war was being fought, were allowed to have seats in the General Assembly as if they were independent states, made the UN a sick joke from the very beginning.

Since then, it has gone from bad to worse, its one achievement being the Korean War, when the Soviet Union was temporarily exercising an empty chair policy. At present it consists of 191 members, most of whom would not begin to understand what democracy, freedom and human rights are.

Finally, there is the structure of the UN, which just happens to be the structure of every tranzi. I am not talking here about secretariats or assemblies but basic accountability.

The problem is not just that the UN is run by career politicians or lawyers, but that they are career politicians and lawyers who want to usurp power from national governments, particularly those elected through a democratic mandate. Neither they nor those troops who keep behaving like old-fashioned conquerors are accountable to anyone for anything.

There can be any number of inquiries but nobody is going to be put on trial (where?) or punished for misbehaviour. Most of those troops have gone home and their countries will refuse all co-operation if there is the slightest chance of blame being brought home.

The unfortunate people of those countries, meanwhile, shrug their shoulders at yet more atrocities being perpetrated on them and their children. The international community must do something. Oh wait, this is the international community in action.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: media, Somalia, UN

It now looks as if Somalia is at war with Ethiopia, or not as the case may be. According to the latest from Reuters (its African reports seemingly still fairly reliable) it is Somalia's Islamists that are at war, not the government.

That in itself would be an interesting development as wars, historically, have usually been considered as affairs between (or within) nations. But, as with the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and Nato against the Taliban, the old definitions and certainties seem to be breaking down.

Whatever else, although – we are told – there may be fewer wars than in the recent past, the number breaking out and the complexity of the issues is such that keeping abreast of them is beyond the capabilities of the ordinary, intelligent lay person.

Accordingly, this Blog has a suggestion. Through general lack of interest, or whatever, we understand that the BBC programme "Top of the Pops" was recently abandoned. If the slot is still vacant, we think there is room for a new weekly programme on the same lines, this one called "Top of the Wars".

Each week we could have a run-down of the wars in progress, with scores awarded to each partly on the basis of the viewers' views and partly according to how many people had been killed the preceding week. No doubt a weighting system would have to be devised, in which – presumably – civilian deaths could score higher than those of soldiers, with an added bonus for shock value and originality. European deaths would, of course, score higher than those of locals, and British even higher, with US deaths topping the league.

Anyhow, whatever the scoring system, from it would emerge the war of the week, to become that week's "Top of the Wars". It would be the topic of conversation in the offices, factories and bars of the nation and, with the BBC's genius for marketing (using other peoples' money for its risk capital), it could line up what would become award-winning DVDs of the shows.

What better way could you imagine of bringing the entertainment value of these wars to the homes of ordinary people, generating massive royalties which can be used to fund UN peacekeeping forces - and the SecGen's pension - a certain way of prolonging the misery and maximising the kill.

Add a Nobel War Prize for the best war of the year (the Peace prize is soooo last-century, don't you think?) and we could have an annual TV bonanza along the lines of the Oscars or Eurovision song contest. And, if the War Prize was as successful as its predecessor, we could look forward to the complete cessation of hostilities throughout the world within a decade.

In the meantime, the media would be able give up its pretence that it was reporting news and integrate its war reporting with its entertainment portfolio, where much of it already belongs.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: media, Somalia, UN

What a wonderful example we have here of the difference between the rigorous MSM with its intellectually independent and hard-hitting hacks and the sloppy bloggers who are eternally predictable in their triviality.

Extreme Mortman (a new one for me) links to the last press conference given by SecGen Kofi Annan (son of Kojo and brother of flat-owning Kobina) and quotes some of the hard-hitting questions asked by the hard-nosed, investigative journalists (hint: Claudia Rosett was not there).

Here is one very fine example:

Mr. Secretary-General, critics and commentators will say what they will about the Secretary-General, but what is important, I'd like to say, is that in your time in office, you have given hope to millions of dispossessed people. And for that, I would say, you will be well remembered. But my Q: as the Secretary-General, you convey moral leadership. Now, how does a former Secretary-General continue to use, without the bully pulpit, that former status to convey and to give moral leadership to the world?

Gosh, the sheer professionalism of that. The independence of thought!

Extreme Mortman asks:

So what do you suppose are the odds that Helen Thomas or David Gregory will treat President Bush this same way during his final press conference?

We all know the answer to that and the words chance and cat and hell spring to mind.

Never mind President Bush. Think of what that pack of hard-hitting, serious and fair-minded journalists have done about Laura Bush having a minor operation for a common form of skin cancer and ... gasp ... not telling the journalists about it. Makes one proud that the world has such a responsible and thoughtful dead-tree media.

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Labels: Kofi Annan, UN

It was on 12 September last year that my colleague wrote a somewhat less than laudatory analysis of UN SecGen, Kofi Annan.

Not quite a year later, we read this, published yesterday. And then, today, we read this.

The one is a Telegraph leader on the failure of the UN in Darfur, where this venerable organisation has been sidelined. The other is a stonking analysis in The Business, of the Iranian situation. There, guess what, the UN has been sidelined.

The final chapter on Lebanon, of course, has yet to be written but if the present UN force is supposed to be "UNIFIL on steroids", then the dose administered must be below detectable threshold.

All one can say of Mr Annan is, which bit of "useless" don't you understand?

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Labels: Kofi Annan, UN