Assistance to Myanmar: inter-agency coordination ongoing

Click here for more on UNCTAD: http://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=332&Sitemap_x0020_Taxonomy=UNCTAD%20Home;

UNCTAD has held a meeting of the United Nations Inter-Agency Cluster on Trade and Productive Capacity with the Permanent Mission of Myanmar in Geneva. Participating in the meeting were representatives of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the International Trade Centre, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and the United Nations Office for Project Services.

Excerpts from U.N. report on N.Korea proliferation

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS ON REUTERS

UNITED NATIONS | Tue Nov 9, 2010 11:44am EST

(Reuters) - After months in limbo due to Chinese objections, a U.N. report suggesting North Korea may have supplied Syria, Iran and Myanmar with banned nuclear technology is heading to the Security Council, possibly on Tuesday.

Following are excerpts from the latest report by the so-called Panel of Experts, which monitors compliance with U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to its two tests of nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009.

The report refers to U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions 1718 from 2006 and 1874 from 2009.

NUCLEAR AND MISSILE AID

"(T)he Panel of Experts has reviewed several government assessments, IAEA (U.N. nuclear watchdog) reports, research papers and media reports indicating continuing DPRK (North Korea) involvement in nuclear and ballistic missile related activities in certain countries including Iran, Syria and Myanmar."

"Evidence provided in these reports indicates that the DPRK has continued to provide missiles, components, and technology to certain countries including Iran and Syria since the imposition of these measures."

"The Panel of Experts is also looking into suspicious activity in Myanmar including activities there of Namchongang Trading (NCG), a 1718 Committee designated entity, and reports that Japan, in June 2009, arrested three individuals for attempting to illegally export a magnetometer to Myanmar via Malaysia, allegedly under the direction of a company known to be associated with illicit procurement for DPRK nuclear and military programmes."

"The Panel of Experts believes that the information referred to (above) merits the close attention of Member States with regard to the implementation and enforcement of the Security Council measures."

ILLEGAL ARMS TRANSFERS

"The 1718 Committee has been notified, since the adoption of resolution 1874 (2009), of four non-compliance cases involving arms exports. An analysis of these cases indicates that the DPRK continues to engage in exporting such proscribed items. In these cases, the DPRK has used a number of masking techniques in order to circumvent the Security Council measures, including false description and mislabeling of the content of the containers, falsification of the manifest covering the shipment, alteration and falsification of the information concerning the original consignor and ultimate consignee, and use of multiple layers of intermediaries, shell companies, and financial institutions."

FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS

"The DPRK also employs a broad range of techniques to mask its financial transactions, including the use of overseas entities, shell companies, informal transfer mechanisms, cash couriers and barter arrangements. However, it must still, in most cases, rely on access to the international financial system to complete its financial operations. In structuring these transactions, attempts are made to mix illicit transactions with otherwise legitimate business activities in such a way as to hide the illicit activity."

SHIPPING ILLICIT CARGO

"Due to the deteriorating conditions of the DPRK's maritime fleet and the enhanced vigilance on DPRK-owned and/or DPRK-flagged vessels since the adoption of resolution 1874 (2009), the DPRK appears now to rely increasingly on foreign-owned and -flagged ships to carry all or part of its illicit cargo."

"The DPRK is also believed to use air cargo to handle high valued and sensitive arms exports. Such cargo can be sent by direct air cargo from the DPRK to the destination country."

"Some modern cargo planes, for example, can fly non stop from the DPRK to Iran (when routed directly through neighboring air space). However, most aircraft would be forced to make refueling stops, with or without such neighboring air space over flight rights, as in the case of the DPRK arms shipment seized in Thailand."

(Compiled by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Why Does UNDP Continue to Aid Repressive Regimes?

AUTHOR:Brett Schaefer

A recent story by Fox News provides yet another example of the United Nations Development Program’s refusal to accede to an unfortunate reality: that the organization’s efforts to work with, and through, the world’s most despotic regimes are regularly twisted to serve the goals of the regime rather than the people suffering under their rule. According to the story:

An independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma calls it ‘disappointing,’ and ‘unsatisfactory,’ and suggests that major portions of the program be discontinued next year. Nonetheless, the director of UNDP intends to keep it alive with as-yet unspecified fixes.

The assessment of the UNDP’s Human Development Initiative suggested there were ‘modest or only limited differences’ between the Burmese villages that got UNDP support and those that didn’t.

Among the areas of negligible impact: health care, education and ‘food security,’ meaning the vital business of whether the poorest were producing and saving enough food to eat in the military-controlled country also known as Myanmar….

Even while admitting that Burma is a ‘difficult and unpredictable’ environment for HDI, however, the assessors state firmly that UNDP’s own problems with community development programs are the most significant. Among them: lack of clear focus; inability to show that it has accomplished much beyond the delivery of tangible goods, such as fertilizer; lack of staff training; and perhaps most importantly of all, lack of any clear strategy to wean the people they are helping off continued outside assistance.

Aid to Burma—whose government has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Obama Administration, is suspected of pursuing a clandestine nuclear program, and has imprisoned opposition politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi 15 out of the last 21 years—has come under increasing scrutiny.

As reported in the FoxNews story, UNDP is under instructions from its Executive Board to ensure that its funds stay out of government hands. However, a 2007 report by a Burmese human rights group asserted that U.N. funding, including UNDP funding, supports state-controlled programs that employ extortion and forced recruitment to “expand military control over the population while divesting itself of the cost of operating programmes and simultaneously legitimizing its policies in the name of development.” In 2008, news storiesrevealed that the “United Nations discovered ‘very serious losses’ of at least $10 million on foreign exchange transactions involving relief money sent to cyclone-battered Burma.”

This is hardly surprising. A number of allegations have been made in recent years concerning improper activities funded by, or linked to, UNDP staff or projects in authoritarian states, including North Korea,Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. In some repressive states, the U.N. and NGOs can work around the government to help the people directly. In these cases, there is some justification for continuing U.N. humanitarian activities. In cases like Burma and North Korea, however, government interference and assertion of authority over humanitarian activities in country is so extensive that humanitarian efforts are crippled. Despite the best efforts of the U.N. and other providers of humanitarian assistance, aid is permitted only if it benefits the regime. In such cases, UNDP programs—and those of other U.N. agencies like WFP and UNICEF—end up inadvertently rewarding the government.

Many argue that the U.N.’s humanitarian work should continue regardless of whether the government benefits because some portion will aid the suffering population. There is little doubt about the suffering in places like North Korean and Burma. However, it is the repressive policies of the government that have most directly contributed to that suffering. Aiding the government, even inadvertently, perpetuates that suffering.

The Fox News story reports that internal assessments have assured the Executive Board that UNDP has not allowed its funds to be used by the government. At the very least, however, considering the “difficult and unpredictable” environment in Burma, UNDP assistance merits closer scrutiny to see if it is inadvertently benefiting the regime.

At August 30 meeting of the UNDP Executive Board—of which the U.S. is a member—the U.S. Mission to the United Nations should closely question all UNDP activities in repressive regimes like Burma, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and others countries and demand full and complete access to all UNDP documents and assessments to inform their examination. At a bare minimum, the U.S. should call for all such programs to be suspended unless the governments: (1) allow the U.N. and NGOs to hire and use local and international staff without government interference; (2) grant complete and free access to projects, distribution centers, and aid recipients to ensure that aid is not being diverted by the government; and (3) not impede non-governmental organizations helping to deliver aid and assess need.

EXCLUSIVE: Report Slams $100M Aid Effort in Burma, But U.N. Plans to Keep Program Alive

George Russell

- FoxNews.com

- August 24, 2010

Despite an independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma that calls it “disappointing” and suggests that major portions be discontinued, the director of UNDP intends to keep it alive with as-yet unspecified fixes.

An independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma calls it “disappointing,” and “unsatisfactory,” and suggests that major portions of the program be discontinued next year. Nonetheless, the director of UNDP intends to keep it alive with as-yet unspecified fixes.

The assessment of the UNDP’s Human Development Initiative suggested there were “modest or only limited differences” between the Burmese villages that got UNDP support and those that didn’t.

Among the areas of negligible impact: health care, education and “food security,” meaning the vital business of whether the poorest were producing and saving enough food to eat in the military-controlled country also known as Myanmar.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ASSESSMENT REPORT

There will be no mention, however, of the wind-down suggestion in a condensed version of the assessment report that will be presented to UNDP’s 36-nation supervisory executive board when it holds a regularly scheduled session in New York City starting Aug. 30. (The U.S. is a board member.)

Instead, the head of UNDP, Helen Clark, suggests in her note to the board that the most criticized parts of the aid effort require a “revision of the program concept and design in order to enhance the impact on poverty.” Clark also holds out the possibility that the “strategic framework” of the programs might require only “modest changes” -- including closer cooperation with local elements of the brutal Burmese regime.

Clark recommends that the board give her the widest latitude to implement changes to the Human Development Initiative “as appropriate.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR’S NOTE

The issue of aid assistance to Burma -- which has largely cut itself off from the outside world -- is a hot-button issue, especially after the Obama Administration last week announced that it would support an international commission of inquiry to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Burmese regime. (Among other things, the regime has kept its chief critic, opposition political leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest since 2003.)

At the same time, international concern has been growing about whether the regime has been developing a clandestine nuclear program along the lines of its ally, North Korea, even as international aid agencies of all kinds commit hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid to the country.

Making sure that UNDP’s funds stay out of government hands in military-dominated Burma was one of the strings attached from the virtual outset to the Human Development Initiative by UNDP’s executive board. Testifying to whether the arms-length distance has been kept is one of the annual tasks assigned to the independent assessors, who also take the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of UNDP efforts in the country.

For years, the assessors have given the program a clean bill of health on the issue of government involvement -- but they have also grown increasingly critical of the effectiveness of much of UNDP’s grass-roots “community development” programming, now under way in some 60 of Burma’s 325 townships -- in part precisely because it lacks greater government involvement.

Last year, the assessors told UNDP that it should be examining the relationship between the length of time the organization had been handing out aid and the impact of the assistance -- which led to this year’s unsettling conclusions that in many cases the impact had been less than significant.

The main focus of assessor skepticism is a double-barreled UNDP program known as the Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP) and a sister program, Community Development in Remote Townships (CDRT), which are administratively joined at the hip.

Ostensibly self-help programs, the community development initiatives have instead, the assessors say, become studies in mission-creep, in which aid-givers have grown their focus of assistance into primary health care, environmental concerns, HIV/AIDS relief, training and education and food security. The assessors quote one senior UNDP official as admitting that the Human Development Initiative is trying to do “everything under the sun.”

UNDP made matters worse, the report says, by expanding the program dramatically, adding to the resource stretch. Yet another complication was 2008’s Cyclone Nargis, which devastated coastal regions of Burma and further diverted aid efforts (though the report notes that with 500 people on the ground in its HDI programs, UNDP was in a good position to pitch in and help with Nargis). Finally, voluntary funding for the HDI effort has been tiling off, largely as a result of the increasingly hard-line behavior of the Burmese regime.

Even while admitting that Burma is a “difficult and unpredictable” environment for HDI, however, the assessors state firmly that UNDP’s own problems with community development programs are the most significant. Among them: lack of clear focus; inability to show that it has accomplished much beyond the delivery of tangible goods, such as fertilizer; lack of staff training; and perhaps most importantly of all, lack of any clear strategy to wean the people they are helping off continued outside assistance.

The U.N.’s fabled bureaucracy also takes a toll: the assessors note that an “inexplicable number” of reports are prepared by UNDP aid-givers each month at the local level, with some technical specialists estimating they spent 20 percent to 30 percent of their time creating paperwork.

Not much of it apparently has to do with how the aid beneficiaries themselves view things: as the assessors delicately put it, “There is presently no adequate mechanism for feedback from beneficiaries within any of the HDI structures.” UNDP, however, told the assessors it is currently working on a pilot project to do that.

Not all of the UNDP efforts in Burma are viewed as critically by the assessors as the organization’s community development work. Its micro-finance projects in Burma get good marks, though the assessors note that the country’s poorest residents are not benefiting.

The assessors also admitted that the UNDP “impact study” upon which its conclusions were based might itself be flawed, through lack of baseline data and other possible failings. But their report underlined that the survey methodology was considered “robust” by a specialist brought in to design the investigation.

In concluding, the independent experts acknowledge that UNDP itself is unlikely to make any changes before its current authorization for the aid program expires next year. But then it says, a “major revision” of the program is called for “to enhance impact on poverty.”

The experts also note, perhaps in tacit acknowledgment of a previous decade of unimpressive results, that UNDP itself “may come to a different conclusion.”

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.

Content from DPR Korea Boxes: UNDP and UNOPS paid for multiple North Korean Officials to travel back-and-forth from Myanmar and Iran for "trainings"

Reveling of the content of UNDP's sealed Boxes of its Programme in North Korea is becoming more and more relevant these days with new allegations of high-level North Koreans Delegations whom have traveled under UNDP/UNOPS Projects to Myanmar and Iran for so called Capacity Building and Training.

The UNDP Boxes, and more specifically the Finance Boxes contained detailed travel authorizations, Purchase Orders, Vouchers and expenditures with names of Officials as well as Photocopy of Passports of North Koreans who travelled back-and-forth to Myanmar and whom might have been involved in assisting Myanmar and Iran in their path towards Nuclear Programmes.

The world needs to know what is in the Boxes of North Korean Programme of United Nations, which are now under the custody of Ban Ki Moon.

Report: Myanmar seeking nuclear weapons

posted 4:28 am Fri June 04, 2010 - BANGKOK

from ABC 7 News - http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0610/742676.html

Documents smuggled out of Myanmar by an army defector indicate its military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and North Korea is probably assisting the program, an expatriate media group said Friday. The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma said the defector had been involved in the nuclear program and smuggled out extensive files and photographs describing experiments with uranium and specialized equipment needed to build a nuclear reactor and develop enrichment capabilities.

But the group concluded in a report that Myanmar is still far from producing a nuclear weapon.

On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Jim Webb announced he was postponing a trip to Myanmar because of new allegations that it was collaborating with North Korea to develop a nuclear program.

Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, referred to documents provided by a Myanmar army defector.

Myanmar's military government has denied similar allegations in the past, but suspicions have mounted recently that the impoverished Southeast Asian nation has embarked on a nuclear program.

Myanmar's junta, which has been condemned worldwide for its human rights abuses, has no hostile neighbors. The military's prime concern is suppressing dissidents at home and battling several small-scaled insurgencies.

Last month, U.N. experts monitoring sanctions imposed against North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests said their research indicated it was involved in banned nuclear and ballistic missile activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar, which is also called Burma.

The DVB report said Russia has also trained Myanmar technicians in nuclear and missile technology.

The group, which operates Oslo-based television and radio stations, said the defector, Sai Thein Win, was an army major who was trained in Myanmar as a defense engineer and later in Russia as a missile expert. It said he had access to secret Myanmar nuclear facilities including a nuclear battalion north of Mandalay "charged with building up a nuclear weapons capability."

It said the documents it obtained were examined by Robert Kelley, an American nuclear scientist and former director in the International Atomic Energy Agency who concluded that Myanmar "is probably mining uranium and exploring nuclear technology that is only useful for weapons."

The group said its report was based on a five-year study that indicated that North Korea was involved in assisting the program.

Documents obtained earlier showed that North Korea was helping Myanmar dig a series of underground facilities and develop missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles).

The group said the documents obtained from the defector show a number of components used in nuclear weapons and missile technology, including a missile fuel pump impeller, chemical engineering equipment that can be used to make compounds used in uranium enrichment, and nozzles used to separate uranium isotopes into bomb materials.

"The total picture is very compelling. Burma is trying to build pieces of a nuclear program, specifically a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and a uranium enrichment program," the report said.

Key nations to meet on Myanmar election

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited key nations to a meeting Thursday to discuss the new electoral laws for Myanmar’s upcoming election that bar detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said that Ban believes it is an appropriate time for another meeting of the Group of Friends of Myanmar focusing on the election.

The group includes about 15 countries -- Myanmar’s neighbours, interested Asian and European nations, and the five permanent UN Security Council members, the US, Russia, China, Britain and France.

Suu Kyi’s lawyer said earlier yesterday in the capital Yangon that she is against registering her National League for Democracy party for the elections because the ruling junta’s restrictions on the vote are “unjust“.

Suu Kyi’s comments came hours after Myanmar’s highest court refused to accept a lawsuit filed by Suu Kyi’s party seeking to revoke the five election laws, which were enacted earlier this month.

The laws set out rules for the vote, but have been widely criticised as designed to keep Suu Kyi out of the race. One law prohibits anyone convicted of a crime from being a member of a political party and instructs parties to expel convicted members or face de-registration.

Suu Kyi’s house arrest was extended last year after she was convicted on charges of violating the terms of her detention when an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside property. She is serving an additional 18-months of house arrest and many top members of her party and ethnic-based parties are in prison. Under the new laws they would be barred from the vote.

At UN, CPJ on Pariah States N. Korea and on Sri Lanka, Buying Tickets, Iran's Eye

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 16 -- The Committee to Protect Journalists on February 16 called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to be more forceful about the importance of press freedom. Inner City Press asked CPJ's Asia expert Bob Deitz about what Mr. Ban and CPJ have done as the Sri Lankan government of Mahinda Rajapaksa has closed down opposition newspapers, reporters have been killed and websites blocked. Video here, from Minute 40:08.

Deitz said that "no one knows how to handle the direction in which the [Sri Lankan] government is going, which is not friendly to the media." He said it might join the "pariah states" of Myanmar, "Burma, North Korea and Zimbabwe," but for feisty journalists who put themselves at risk.

But as to what CPJ does, Weitz said "right now we are hanging back with a lot of people," trying to figure out whether to "come down hard or engage in quiet advocacy."

Afterwards, Inner City Press asked Deitz for more specifics about this "quiet" approach, which the UN seems to share, in the most benign interpretation of Ban's visit in May 2009 after what even the UN called the "bloodbath on the beach" and since.

Even the UN's Children and Armed Conflict mandate, which belatedly sent Patrick Cammaert to Sri Lanka in December, never had him brief the Press afterwards. Radhika Coomaraswamy, when Inner City Press asked her about this silence last week, said that Cammaert went to Europe to get married after his trip, then it was "too late" to brief the press about his visit.

Deitz said that the opposition press in Sri Lanka asks that particular journalists' cases "not be publicized," as it would only make things worse. "Just get us out of here," Deitz said such journalists ask, adding the CPJ helps with plane tickets.

Another correspondent remarked afterwards is that "quiet advocacy is what diplomats do, not journalists or their organizations."

Masked rally for press freedom in Sri Lanka, Jan 2009, UN and CPJ's tickets out not shown

Inner City Press asked CPJ's deputy director Robert Mahoney about the UN's own envoy to Somalia Ahmedou Ould Abdallah having called on a "moratorium" on Somali journalists reporting on the killing of civilians by the African Union peacekeepers of AMISOM.

Mahoney said it is up to journalists to make their own editorial decisions. Ironically, Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky has, at least in his first month on the job, said such things as "that's not a story."

Also on the podium was Newsweek journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari, about whom CNN's Fareed Zakaria devoted the foreword to CPJ's study. As Bahari spoke, a representative from Iran's Mission to the UN sat in the UN press hall's front row, taking notes.

The Iranian mission has invited UN correspondents -- including this one -- to a celebration of Iran's national day on February 18. Inner City Press told Bahari about the event, encouraging him to come and cover it. Watch this space.

Footnote: three hours after the CPJ press conference on its report, "Attacks on the Press in 2009," which names North Korea as the world's most censored country, Inner City Press asked Mr. Ban's senior advisor Kim Won-soo and political advisor Lynn Pascoe if they had even raised press freedom during their recent trip to Pyongyang. Video here.

No, Mr. Pascoe said. Inner City Press asked Mr. Kim to respond for Mr. Ban on CPJ's wider call to be more forceful on press freedom. While he answered about UNDP in North Korea, he did not answer on press freedom. Inner City Press has at UN noon briefings asked for Mr. Kim to come and answer questions more often. We'll see.

In another UN footnote, CPJ's genial Mr. Deitz granted an interview to a student reporter, Melissa Best, whose piece should air as part of WNYC's Radio Rookies program. Ms. Best, who aspired to be a US diplomat, told Inner City Press that North Korea's nuclear ambitions might call for more stick and less carrots. The show should air -- and Internet -- in June...

* * *

Denying Corruption of Citigroup and BofA, Obiangs Cite Obama, ExxonMobil's Investment

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 15 -- Ten days after the release by the U.S. Senate of a reporting on evasion by the son of Equatorial Guinea's President for Life Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue of anti-money laundering controls by and at Citigroup, Bank of America, Wachovia / Wells Fargo and others, the Obiang regime fired back, calling the report racist and citing in its defense the election of Barack Obama.

Inner City Press is putting the Obiangs' memo online, here.

The Senate report exhaustively shows how Teodorin and his lawyers moved tens of millions of dollars through Citibank and Wachovia (owned by Wells Fargo since the financial meltdown), and used accounts at Bank of America, City National and other banks. The report described how Teodorin

"brought over $100 million into the United States using wire transfer systems at just two U.S. financial institutions, Wachovia Bank and Citibank. Neither system had been programmed to detect or block wire transfers bearing his name. In 2009... Citibank declined to take the same action due to projections that identifying, freezing, and investigating these wire transfers would generate too much work for its anti-money laundering staff...From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Obiang used accounts at three U.S. banks, Union Bank of California, Bank of America, and Citibank, often with Mr. Berger’s assistance, to deposit, transfer and spend nearly $10 million. Most of these funds were wire transferred from accounts in Equatorial Guinea held in the name of Mr. Obiang or two EG companies he controlled, Somagui Forestal and Socage."

To this, the Government of Equatorial Guinea in a communique sent to the Press on February 15, the President's Day holiday in the U.S., argues that

"According to Equatoguinean legislation, as occurs exactly in the most of the world, the natural and legal persons, as occurs in this case with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, are perfectly authorized to do business and maintain other types of jobs at the margin of their Ministerial obligations."

Teodorin's "marginal" business includes a $30 million mansion in Malibu, a jet and recording studio, among other things. Previously he and his president for life father Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo moved their money, like Pinochet, into the U.S. through Riggs Bank.

Inner City Press and its Fair Finance Watch dug into these connections, including to Spain's Santander Bank and HSBC, when the Obiang disgraced Riggs was being sold to PNC Bank. Click here for coverage in Le Monde, in French.

The U.S. Federal Reserve did little at that time. With the major banks it regulates now implicated again in corrupt money laundering, what will the supposedly chastened Federal Reserve do?

President for life Obiang, speaking at the UN, Citi and BofA not shown

The "Equatoguinean" response complains at the Senate report deals only with African corruption -- Angola with HSBC, Gabon's Omar Bongo with Citigroup, Nigeria's Abubakar with Suntrust and the ubiquitous Citibank -- and not any other continent. In this, it echoes the defenders of Sudan's Omar al Bashir, that the International Criminal Court and its prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo have so far indicted only African defendants.

But Equatorial Guinea goes further. Its cover email to Inner City Press argues that "it can be considered as an authentic insult to Africa, and more so after the people of the United States have voted in the majority for a President of African origin."

Then, in capital letters, Equatorial Guinea screams that

"In Africa and in Equatorial Guinea we are tired of BEING TREATED FOR CENTURIES LIKE INHUMAN BEASTS, ON WHICH ALL THE BRUTAL AND EVIL BEHAVIOURS POSSIBLE ARE BLAMED. This is again so verifiable in this case that even different media of the United States have written these days, in regards to this case, THAT THE FAMILY OBIANG PRACTICES CANNIBALISM."

Another of the ICC's and Ocampo's indictees, Jean Pierre Bemba the previous Vice President of the Congo, argued during his campaign against Joseph Kabila that, "I am not a cannibal!"

The Equatoguinean defense that's closest to the mark is that

"We also wish to put on the record that the United States is the country from which comes the highest foreign investment in Equatorial Guinea, which exceeds 12 billion USA dollars, and that no American corporation has complained of fraudulent behaviour of the Government. We also expect the Senate Subcommittee to be consistent with the criteria of the North American companies."

Or should it be the other way around? Major U.S. investors with the Obiangs include ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, Hess Corporation, and Noble Energy. We will have more on all this.

Click here for an Inner City Press YouTube channel video, mostly UN Headquarters footage, about civilian deaths in Sri Lanka.

UN's Ban Slammed by Norway's Juul, on Burma and Sri Lanka Trips, Should Oslo Be Canceled?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 19 -- As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon returned to New York after ten days in South Korea, soon to turn around and visit Norway by the end of the month, he was confronted by an embarrassing leak in the Norwegian foreign ministry of Deputy Permanent Representative Mona Juul's unflattering assessment of his "failed" trips to Myanmar and Sri Lanka, his flying into rages and ineffective leadership.

That Ms. Juul is also the spouse of Ban's Under Secretary General Terje Roed Larsen makes the criticism all the more telling. What will Ban Ki-moon do?

While Ban was in South Korea, a month after Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe refused to allow him a meeting or photo op with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, precisely such a visit was allowed to U.S. Senator Jim Webb. When Ban's Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe was asked by Inner City Press and others if Ban had any comment on Webb's more successful visit -- he also left the country with another Suu Kyi visitor, John Yettaw, freeing him from seven years of hard labor -- Ms. Okabe tersely said no, no comment. Later her Office issued a "response to questions at the noon briefing" begrudgingly acknowledging the Webb visit.

At UN, Mona Juul (at left), Ban and trips not shown

Ban's record on Sri Lanka has gotten even worse. During his visit in late May, he smiled as Tamil children imprisoned by the government in UN funded camps at Manik Farms were forced to sing his name. Now, those camps have become flooded, including with raw sewage. The government blames the UN, and Ban's UN has said nothing.

What is the purpose of Ban's planned August 31 visit to Norway? Should it not now be called off, and Team Ban get back to their actual mending work -- including addressing the proliferating nepotism and corrupt hiring scandals -- at the UN?

Official: U.N. Lost $10M in Burma

By BENNY AVNI, Staff Reporter of the Sun July 29, 2008

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations lost at least $10 million as it carried out humanitarian relief efforts in Burma because it complied with a plan allowing the country's ruling junta to control foreign currency, according to the top U.N. humanitarian coordinator.

Storm victims stand outside their shacks after they rebuilt them with tarpaulin and leftover pieces from the river after Nargis cyclone at Ohnpinsu village near Labutta town at the Irrawaddy delta on July 10, 2008.

John Holmes's disclosure yesterday raises questions about how funds donated by well-meaning governments and private entities are spent by the United Nations in countries such as Burma, where a dictatorial regime controls every aspect of life, and whether the international effort unwittingly helps such regimes further tighten their grip on power, Burma watchers say.

U.N. officials had downplayed the scope of the losses accrued as a result of the junta's distorted exchange rate. But Mr. Holmes acknowledged yesterday that the amount was "significant," calling it "unacceptable." He promised to raise the issue with Burma's government to ensure that losses could be cut down in the future. But evidence emerged yesterday that the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which he heads, was aware of the problem even as it was appealing worldwide for additional funds for Burma.

An economic professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, Sean Turnell, said yesterday that the figure of $10 million in Burma losses is "not inconsistent" with his own estimate. "But why is the U.N. handing any foreign currency to the Burmese regime anyway?" the economist, who was one of the first to expose the loss, said, adding that such handouts only strengthen the ruling junta.

International organizations were quick to offer assistance and donations to the victims of Cyclone Nargis after it hit the Burmese coast on May 2, killing 140,000 people. OCHA appealed internationally for $200 million, of which $180 million was quickly raised, Mr. Holmes said. A third of those funds was spent inside the country in kyat, the local currency, he told reporters yesterday.

The conversion from dollars to kyat is done through Foreign Exchange Certificates, which are issued by government-licensed local vendors according to what the government claims are market rates. The difference between the official conversion rate and the FEC rate has fluctuated between 10% and 25%, Mr. Holmes said. According to his office's calculation, $10 million of the initial $200 million appeal funds was lost through such conversions.

Although OCHA has said conditions on the ground have improved significantly, on July 10 it appealed for additional international funds — up to $480 million — to aid Burma. OCHA has already received $200 million of this second flash appeal, Mr. Holmes said.

Inner City Press, a Web site focusing on U.N. reporting that has investigated the foreign exchange losses extensively, yesterday published a internal memorandum from June 26 that showed OCHA was aware at that time that the foreign exchange conversions had caused losses of 20%. None of the losses, however, were disclosed to potential donors when OCHA launched its additional appeal in July.

"Presumably the government is benefitting somehow" from the exchange rate, Mr. Holmes said yesterday, though he acknowledged that he could not calculate how much of the $10 million that had already been lost went directly to top generals or their associates. A similar foreign exchange plan led to losses of U.N. funds in North Korea.

A sudden influx of funds to dictatorial countries such as Burma creates the potential for an inflationary effect, Mr. Turnell said. Such an effect "increases the power of anyone who controls the country," he said. Meanwhile, he added, the junta has enough resources to handle the relief efforts, if it cared to do so, without foreign funds.

The Bush administration has spent $47.2 million so far on assistance to Burma, according to government documents. "We're against any waste of resources that taxpayers around the world and member states provide to meet the needs of people around the world," the American ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said. "We also do not want any diversion of it to unintended goals, and that applies to this case."