“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 programs.”
** See Update courtesy of reader GaryÂ
So we are being told by the spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon:
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has been on the job for less than a month, but with a 26-word announcement Friday he did more to reform that international body than anything ever attempted by predecessor Kofi Annan.
“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 programs.” So said Mr. Ban’s spokesman after the Secretary-General met with Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the United Nations Development Program. The key word here is “external.” Concerns about corruption in the U.N.’s Oil for Food program bubbled for years before Mr. Annan finally agreed to set up the independent Volcker Commission.
The proximate cause for Friday’s meeting between Messrs. Ban and Melkert, and for Mr. Ban’s clean-house announcement, was Melanie Kirkpatrick’s op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal on Friday detailing irregularities in the UNDP’s programs in North Korea and citing U.S. concerns that tens of millions of dollars in hard currency have been funneled to dictator Kim Jong Il.
The UNDP must have got Mr. Ban’s memo. We publish today a letter in The Wall Street Journal (available here) from the agency’s Mr. Melkert, responding to Ms. Kirkpatrick’s article and our accompanying editorial. “We . . . welcome an independent and external audit of our operations in North Korea,” he writes. And, “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.”
Okay, it has only been a month, so I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but this could very well have been a story about the Secretary General sweeping this under the rug. What are your thoughts?
From reader Gary:
The UN needs to establish a policy of 100% transparency. Also go after those who abuse the system, where ever they run. Furthermore the UN needs major structural changes such that it has a strong basis in democracy and is less vulnerable to manipulation by the world’s dictators. Specifically:
This is my proposal and, before you ask, it’s very much not a joke.
January 22, 2007 - 02:20 PM on January 22nd, 2007
Nothing will happen until Ban turns over corrupt UN officers and functionaries for prosecution and punishment.
He could also abandon Jan “Mr. The US is Stingy” Egeland in Darfur. They know what do to with trash like that.
January 22, 2007 - 02:33 PM on January 22nd, 2007
This is a very good thing (urgently looking into existing U.N. programs) if they expand those programs, and create more of them! We on the Left know that the U.N. is the best hope for humanity; if the right-wing would just get out of the U.N.’s way it would be able to achieve everything it was chartered to do!
THAT’s whats wrong: the U.N. has never been allowed to do what it must to accomplish the greater good!
January 22, 2007 - 04:11 PM on January 22nd, 2007
Superlib: Are you for real, or are you just a parody of a lib?
January 22, 2007 - 06:06 PM on January 22nd, 2007
3- Parody of…he detests them Susanna…
January 22, 2007 - 07:15 PM on January 22nd, 2007
Thanks, Peejz; he reminds me of the Libs who try to pretend to be conservative by applying all the lib stereotypes of conservatives. So he’s just their counterpart.
January 22, 2007 - 09:20 PM on January 22nd, 2007
The UN needs to establish a policy of 100% transparency. Also go after those who abuse the system, where ever they run. Furthermore the UN needs major structural changes such that it has a strong basis in democracy and is less vulnerable to manipulation by the world’s dictators. Specifically…
This is my proposal and, before you ask, it’s very much not a joke.
gary
January 22, 2007 - 09:45 PM on January 22nd, 2007
5-
January 22, 2007 - 11:42 PM on January 22nd, 2007
“Super Lib” is the voice of liberalism. His idiotic posts well characterize the fundamentals of liberalism; he says the things libs feel but are often reluctant to express. Many of the liberals who post here try to appear reasonable (moderate), but their liberalism invariably shows through. Super Lib cuts right to the chase.
Super Lib is unabashed in his liberalism. He’s obviously proud of it and offers no apology.
January 24, 2007 - 12:14 AM on January 24th, 2007
Liberal, conservative, you guys have GOT to get over the labels and concentrate on actually solving the problems.
gary