North Korea's uranium plant sends a chilling message to Washington

• 
• • Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 November 2010 19.56 GMT
  • Article history
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The West's policy of trying to cut Pyongyang off from nuclear supplies has been shown to be failing miserably

Siegfried Hecker: the man who used to run the US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos, was taken aback by the advanced state of North Korea's uranium enrichment plant on a recent visit. Photograph: Dennis Cook/AP

North Korea does not as a rule give American academics tours of its most sensitive nuclear sites. Siegried Hecker was shown around Yongbyon not out of a sudden spirit of scientific openness, but to send a message to Washington. That message said: not only are we enriching uranium, we are already very good at it.

Hecker, who used to run the US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos, was whisked around the new enrichment facility with his mouth agape. The place was much bigger than he imagined and much more modern.

It means that efforts to cut North Korea off from nuclear technology are failing miserably. The policy of imposing sanctions and refusing to resume talks with Pyongyang until it ceases the most provocative elements of that programme (and apologises for sinking a South Korean battleship this year),is not working.

North Korea has shown itself extremely adept at the game of nuclear bluff. It has provoked three previous nuclear crises, in 1994, 2002 and 2006, aimed at raising the stakes at the six-party talks and winning more pledges of economic aid and fuel oil deliveries. These new developments suggest that, whatever the health of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, the regime as a whole has not lost its taste for brinkmanship.

The Hecker report gives Washington a lot to think about on several fronts. First, despite its claims that everything Hecker saw was home-made, it is clear that North Korea has been able to go shopping around the world for the equipment it needs, despite multiple UN sanctions. In fact, the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington deduced the existence of such an enrichment plant over a month ago, based on analysis of North Korea's procurement methods.

The second striking element of the discovery is the speed at which the 2,000-centrifuge enrichment plant was built. It was not there just a year ago. That is highly unusual because getting precise high-speed centrifuges to work consistently and lining them up in "cascades" of 300 machines would normally take years.

"There is an anomaly in how rapidly this has been built," said David Albright, the head of the institute, which yesterday published satellite pictures of the site. "That raises the question of whether this plant was originally put together somewhere else and was moved to Yongbyon, or whether there is a parallel plant elsewhere."

Albright said that the third reason for international concern was that the sophisticated centrifuge plant had gone undetected until the North Koreans had chosen to reveal it to Hecker.

"It shows how difficult it is to find these centrifuge plants," he said, adding that that had implications in Iran, where some western intelligence agencies believe the government is pursuing a secret enrichment project in parallel to its publicly acknowledged programme.

It is just the latest in a series of blows to Barack Obama's nuclear agenda. He took office in 2009 promising that the nuclear weapons powers would do more to disarm and thereby further isolate "rogue" states like Iran and North Korea, strangling their attempts to join the nuclear club by the back door.

So far, his disarmament efforts appear stalled at home while both Pyongyang and Tehran show no sign of surrendering their nuclear ambitions.

North Korea Report Validates Concern, Mullen Says

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By JOSEPH BERGER

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday that a report by a visiting American scientist that North Korea has built a new plant to enrich uranium lends “very visible life” to his simmering worries about that country’s nuclear ambitions.

He said that American leaders have long assumed that North Korea continued “to head in the direction of additional nuclear weapons,” and a report in The New York Times on Sunday that Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was recently allowed to view a new and sophisticated plant for enriching uranium bolstered that assumption.

“This validates a long-standing concern we’ve had with regard to North Korea and its enrichment of uranium,” he said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour.”

The new plant, whose modernistic technology, rich collection of centrifuges and up-to-date control room astonished Dr. Hecker, did not exist in the spring of 2009, just before international weapons inspectors were thrown out of the country. While North Korea has already tested two atomic bombs and produced other nuclear weapons, those were manufactured from the spent fuel harvested from a nuclear reactor, not from enriched uranium.

North Korea insists the uranium is intended for a reactor that would generate electricity. American officials, however, believe the Communist regime there is focused on building more nuclear weapons and fear that without any capacity to inspect, they cannot know for certain.

North Korea is already being punished for flouting inspections with sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The Obama administration’s new verbal campaign may be intended to pressure China, North Korea’s most important patron.

However, Admiral Mullen did not express confidence that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, would respond to new pressures.

“He blows hot and cold,” Admiral Mullen said, adding later that the North Korean leader was “predictable in his unpredictability.” “He moves in a certain direction and then reverts, and I certainly would see him in his reversion mode at this particular point in time.”

Admiral Mullen also sought to prop up President Obama’s effort to secure ratification of an arms control treaty with Russia — the so-called New Start — by a two-thirds majority of the United States Senate. The prospects of knitting together that majority seemed to collapse last week when Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chief Republican negotiator in the Senate on the arms issue, said he would block a vote on the pact in the current lame-duck session of Congress.

The treaty would force both countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals and resume inspections that lapsed last year for the first time since the Cold War.

Clearly targeting his remarks to Republican misgivings about a new treaty, Admiral Mullen said he was “completely comfortable with where we are militarily” and feared only that without a treaty the United States cannot verify Russian claims about paring its arsenal. He called ratification of a treaty an urgent “national security issue of great significance.”

“We’re close to one year without any ability to verify what’s going on in Russia,” he said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” reinforced his position, noting that Russia has “thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at the United States,” and that from the Reagan administration on, arms controls treaties “have been overwhelmingly passed.”

Both Admiral Mullen and Mrs. Clinton tried to clarify how long the Obama administration intends to keep American troops in Afghanistan. They said that American units would slowly turn over leadership in combat operations to the Afghan army starting in the spring, but the goal is not to cede that combat role completely until the end of 2014. Afterwards, Americans would continue to advise, equip and train the Afghan army, both said.

N.Korea rejects UN human rights resolution as conspiracy

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Marzuki Darusman (pictured) was

appointed UN special rapporteur

on human rights in North Korea

SEOUL — North Korea snubbed a UN resolution condemning its human rights conditions, calling it a US-led conspiracy to topple the communist regime through pressure.

"The 'resolution' is a product of the political plot of the hostile forces," a spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

"The hostile forces led by the US hatch this plot every year to bring down the DPRK's (North Korea's) system through pressure and conspiratorial means by labeling it a 'human rights abuser,'" he said, according to Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The country would steadily strengthen and develop "the Korean-style socialist system which fully protects the human rights and comprehensively promotes them," the spokesman said.

The West was "being condemned by the world community for its racial discrimination, maltreatment of immigrants, violence against women and ill-treatment of prisoners and all other human rights abuses," he added.

The UN General Assembly's main human rights committee on Thursday passed a resolution which condemned "torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including inhuman conditions of detention, public executions, extrajudicial and arbitrary detention" in North Korea.

One hundred nations backed the resolution, introduced by the European Union, United States and other western nations, with China and other Asian nations among 18 countries to vote against it.

The European Union, which has put the resolution to the committee each year since 2003, said North Korea had made "no substantial efforts" to respond to concerns raised each year by the international community.

Further resolutions condemned human rights conditions in Iran and Myanmar.

North Korea, which has faced strong criticism from international human rights groups on its labour camps and public executions, has refused access to a UN special rights envoy.

But the resolution did note better cooperation with UN humanitarian agencies.

China voted against the motion, saying "human rights issues should be dealt with through dialogue and cooperation".

Indonesia and Malaysia also voted against, while Singapore was one of 16 countries to abstain, saying it opposed resolutions which targeted one nation.

Marzuki Darusman, who was appointed UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea in August, will visit South Korea on November 22-26 to gather information on alleged human rights violations in the North.

Pyongyang in October rejected Darusman's request to enter the North.

Darusman will meet with South Korean government authorities, NGOs and alleged victims of human rights violations in the North, an aide said.

A Short United Nations To-Do List for the New Congress

Published on November 18, 2010 by Brett Schaefer

The U.S. has been the largest financial supporter of the United Nations since the organization’s founding in 1945. The U.S. is currently assessed 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and more than 27 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget. In dollar terms, the Administration’s budget for FY 2011 requested $516.3 million for the U.N. regular budget and more than $2.182 billion for the peacekeeping budget.[1] The U.S. also provides assessed financial contributions to other U.N. organizations and voluntary contributions to many more U.N. organizations. According to the Office of Management and Budget, total U.S. contributions to the U.N. system were more than $6.347 billion in FY 2009,[2] compared to contributions totaling just $3.183 billion in FY 2001.[3]

Despite these huge and rapidly growing financial outlays, the U.S. often finds itself on the losing side in U.N. debates and votes, even those involving budgetary matters and proposals to improve U.N. management, oversight, and accountability.[4]

The power of the purse places clear responsibility on Congress to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are used prudently. Although U.S. contributions to international programs are not a large part of the budget, they should not be immune from this consideration. In recent years, despite the U.N.’s record of mismanagement and waste, Congress has rejected the use of financial withholding to increase U.S. influence to ensure that those funds are used prudently and in a manner that supports U.S. interests. History shows, however, that the most effective way to increase U.S. influence over U.N. budgetary decisions and reforms has been to link specific demands with financial withholding legislated by Congress.[5]

Action Items for Congress

There are many things that Congress could do to scrutinize U.S. contributions to the U.N. system and bolster U.S. interests.

Link U.S. Assistance to Support for U.S. Policy Priorities in the U.N. Since 2000, about 95 percent of U.N. member states that receive U.S. assistance have voted against the U.S. most of the time in the U.N. General Assembly on non-consensus votes. The U.S. should inform aid recipients that their support—or lack thereof—for U.S. priorities in the U.N. and other international organizations will directly affect future decisions on allocating U.S. assistance.[6]

Demand More Influence on U.N. Budgetary Decisions. The General Assembly, which establishes budget and policy priorities for the U.N., operates on a one-country, one-vote basis. This creates a free-rider problem in which countries that pay little to the U.N. have a say in votes on financial decisions that is equivalent to those that provide the bulk of the organization’s financial support. An example of how this dynamic can work happened in 2007, when the U.N. member states approved the organization’s regular budget over the objection of the U.S.[7]

If the U.N. is to be a more effective, efficient, and accountable body, budgetary decision-making must be linked to financial responsibilities, because the member states that pay the most have the most interest in seeing that U.N. funds are used effectively. This can be done by weighting votes on budgetary decisions to give major contributors increased influence, shifting funding for activities currently funded under the assessed U.N. regular and peacekeeping budgets toward voluntary funding, or spreading the financial burden across U.N. membership more evenly.[8] Congress should withhold U.S. contributions to the U.N. until changes are made to address the disparity between contributions and influence in U.N. budgetary decisions.

Insist on a Zero Nominal Growth U.N. Budget. The U.N. regular budget has more than doubled since 2000. Despite a significant increase in the proposed two-year budget for 2010 and 2011, the Obama Administration did not even demand a vote on the budget in December 2009. Already, the U.N. Secretary-General is projecting an increase in the 2012–2013 biennial budget of more than $300 million.

Absent Administration leadership, it is up to Congress to impose budgetary restraint on the U.N. The U.S. zero growth policy for the U.N. budget helped to constrain growth in the late 1980s and 1990s. Congress should endorse a zero nominal growth policy for the U.N. budget based on its 2010 assessment (the first year of the current biennium), establish that as the dollar cap that the U.S. will pay for assessed contributions to the U.N. regular budget for future years, and instruct the Administration to use its “voice and vote” to oppose any increase in overall resources and staff for the U.N. regular budget.[9]

Increase Competition for Voluntary Funding. The President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform noted that the U.S. gives the U.N. system “more than $3.5 billion in ‘voluntary’ funds each year.”[10] As a cost-saving measure, the commission recommends reducing these voluntary contributions by 10 percent, or about $350 million.

These funds are voluntary, and the U.S. is under no obligation to pay them. Considering current budgetary problems, Congress should cut this funding by half and allocate the reduced funding based on evidence of effectiveness, transparency, and cooperation with the U.S. Voluntarily funded organizations that flout this standard, as the U.N. Development Program has in recent years,[11] should have their funding eliminated. Having U.N. organizations compete for funding would contribute to efficiency and effectiveness and improve responsiveness to member state requests.[12]

Demand Reimbursement of All Funds Owed the U.S. by the U.N. The U.N. has retained funds owed to American taxpayers both with the Tax Equalization Fund and with the cash surpluses from closed peacekeeping missions.[13] Together, these funds involve hundreds of millions of dollars. Congress should insist that the U.N. reimburse and repay the U.S. the amounts it is owed on time.

Withhold Funding for the Human Rights Council (HRC). The HRC was created in 2006 to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, a body that had failed to hold governments accountable for violating basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. The HRC has proven to be no better—and in some ways, worse—than the commission it replaced.

The Obama Administration engaged the HRC believing that the U.S. would be able to improve the HRC from within. Unfortunately, the performance of the HRC with the U.S. as a member has been virtually indistinguishable from its performance absent U.S. membership.[14] Congress should withhold an amount equivalent to the U.S. share of the HRC budget from its funding for the U.N. regular budget.

Press for Management and Oversight Reforms. Sunsetting U.N. mandates and implementing the moribund mandate review,[15] combined with a zero nominal growth policy for the U.N. regular budget, should spur the U.N. to shift resources within the budget from lower to higher priority activities. The absence of a truly independent inspector general similar to the defunct Procurement Task Force at the U.N. is an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed.[16] Similarly, U.N. peacekeepers all too often are not held to account for misconduct, and a fundamental review of ongoing missions for relevance and merit is long overdue.[17] There is also a troubling lack of transparency in many U.N.-affiliated organizations that impedes U.S. oversight.[18]

Congress and the Administration, drawing on the analysis and expertise of the Government Accountability Office, should identify the most critical reforms and inform the U.N. and other member states that the U.S. will withhold a portion of its contributions to the U.N. regular and peacekeeping budgets and to specified U.N.-affiliated organizations until they are fully implemented.

Protecting U.S. Interests and Taxpayer Dollars

Pursuing these recommendations would benefit U.S. interests by creating financial incentives for states to support U.S. policies in the U.N. and offset pressures from other nations, increase market incentives for voluntarily funded U.N. organizations to improve their effectiveness and justify their work to Congress, impose budgetary discipline in Turtle Bay, and reinvigorate the moribund U.N. reform agenda. It would also contribute to the short-term efforts to arrest U.S. budget deficits and help ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are used prudently.

As stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars, Members of Congress should be vigilant in scrutinizing the U.N. budget to guard against impropriety and waste and insist that U.S. interests are being advanced through U.S. contributions to the U.N. system.

Brett D. Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009).

Should UN Employees Be IPCC Lead Authors?

STORY HERE

Thursday, November 18, 2010

By Donna Laframboise

Koko Warner is an American citizen who was selected to be a lead author of the next edition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. For these purposes, it has been decided that she officially represents the country of Germany. [see p. 8 of this 27-page PDF]

Warner is one of at least four people assigned to work on the new IPCC report who is employed by an entity called the United Nations University. First and foremost, this institution exists to further “the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

I can’t be the only one who finds this troubling. Scholarship is one thing. Scholarship sponsored and supervised by bureaucrats perched atop the world’s political org chart is surely another. Why does the United Nations feel the need to cultivate its own army of scholars? Of all the things in this messed up world on which the UN could be spending its money how can this be a priority?

Is it not also awkward that the IPCC – itself a UN body – thinks UN employees are the sort of experts who should be writing what is supposed to be a dispassionate climate change report? Is there no concern that the UN appears to be influencing the outcome? After all, in one chapter of the upcoming climate bible (Working Group 2′s Chapter 24) two of the 11 people responsible for writing it are affiliated with this university.

Warner herself will contribute to a chapter titled Climate-resilient pathways: adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development – which will be produced by eight authors backed up by three review editors. As one of those eight authors, her judgment will inform this chapter’s findings.

So what do we know about her? For one thing, she is the lead author of a lavishly illustrated document (36-page PDF here) titled In Search of Shelter published in May 2009. Rather than being a scholarly work, this is a glossy public relations brochure – an overt example of advocacy literature. We know this because the first sentence on the acknowledgments page admits as much:

This report and related activities advocating for the protection of environmental migrantsare possible due to generous support from the UN Refugee Agency… [bold added]

Numerous people connected to a range of United Nations bodies are thanked for their assistance with this report, individually as well as collectively. For example, the authors acknowledge receiving “constructive feedback from the [United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention] and other UN…organizations.”

Cue the alarm bells. The UNFCCC is an international treaty. It is an entirely politicalmechanism. The people involved in that organization are political animals. Period.

One of Warner’s coauthors is an employee of CARE International, an anti-poverty NGO. The report advises us that media inquiries regarding this report should be directed to an e-mail address at CareClimateChange.org. The report then thanks seven additional CARE employees by name, a couple of employees of another NGO called Germanwatch, and someone from Oxfam.

In other words, this document has been produced by people who have agendas – agendas that cannot be pursued unless others (nations, foundations, and private citizens) fund them via charitable donations. Which means these people, no matter how well-intentioned they might be, have an enormous incentive to exaggerate and dramatize their subject matter.

In a subsequent blog post I’ll discuss the report itself. But for now, it’s worth noticing that thisnon-peer-reviewed document was officially released during the Bonn Climate Change talks in June 2009. Rather than being a run-of-the-mill academic study whose findings are released to the media whenever it gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, this report received very special and unusual treatment.

It wasn’t merely accorded its own press conference at a larger event in which representatives of the world’s media were already in attendance. Rather, its findings were delivered under the guise of a Media Training Workshop sponsored by the UNFCCC itself. In a video of that event it is a representative of the UNFFCC who introduces Warner and her co-author to the press corps.

What does all this mean? It means Warner is not an independent scholar. She is a UN employee. Her research has been funded by the United Nations and brazenly promoted by the United Nations in a manner intended to advance the United Nations’ climate change agenda.

And now she is an IPCC lead author.

Sign this GAP online petition and demand government accountability!

Take 30 Seconds to Demand Federal Whistleblower Rights!

Dear GAP Supporters: This is it. Congressional leaders have a chance to finally pass the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S. 372, H.R. 1507) during this final session of Congress. If they don’t, GAP and our partners will have to start from scratch next year with the new Congress. Tomorrow, leaders are expected to set their agenda for the lame duck session. But they need to hear from you that whistleblower rights for federal employees are important! Please take 30 seconds to sign this online petition and demand government accountability! We can’t overstate the importance of this legislation. Countless whistleblowers continue to be the targets of retaliation, without having any credible rights to defend themselves. These protections have been years in the making, and are truly an absolute necessity for government accountability and transparency. The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act would provide solid protections to all kinds of federal workers. The types of whistleblowers that would be directly affected is incredible – that is, you would already think these employees could safely tell the truth! Just to provide a few examples of who these protections would apply to: · FDA drug scientists who are harassed for wanting to report killer drugs · Food safety inspectors being muzzled about unsafe practices · Climate scientists being suppressed from reporting data · Air Marshals exposing unsafe practices or uncovering vulnerabilities to our safety It's clear that providing a safe method for people to tell the truth – and expose serious public safety threats before it’s too late – is essential to keeping Americans safe. Half a minute of your time could result in a safer country and more accountable government. Please support federal whistleblowers today. Sing the petition that has been posted by the Make It Safe Coalition, which GAP spearheads. Please take 30 seconds to sign this online petition and demand government accountability! Please also consider calling the Obama administration and Congressional Leadership as well. Our suggested message to leadership is: “If you're serious about reducing the debt and deficit by fighting waste, fraud and abuse, complete passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act during the lame duck. Don't delay again on protection for those who risk their careers to defend the taxpayers.” Obama administration: 202-456-1111 Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid: 202-224-3542 Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell: 202-224-2541 Speaker Nancy Pelosi: (202) 225-0100 House Minority Leader John Boehner: 202-225-6205

The Deepening Mysteries of U.N. Financial Disclosure

By Claudia Rosett @ Forbes

Nov. 15 2010 - 10:54 am | 583 views | 1 recommendation | 0 comments

When the new U.S. Congress convenes in January, there may be revived interest in oversight of a runaway United Nations. The U.N. system is fueled by billions every year in U.S. tax dollars, but has been operating these past two years without such speed bumps as even the occasional congressional oversight hearing into those busy back corridors of the U.N., in which the U.S. administration places so much trust, and through which so much money flows.

Many areas want looking into. These range from assorted fiascos of U.N. peacekeeping and sanctions regimes, to such questions as who’s actually benefiting from U.S. money given to the U.N. (now more than $6 billion per year) and from the credibility that U.S. support lends to the institution (priceless).

But a common theme running through all of this is the U.N.’s continuing failure to provide transparency and accountability. On that score, there’s a certain sorry entertainment value — as well as serious questions — to be found in browsing the U.N.’s current version of financial disclosure, as practiced by senior U.N. officials. This system was supposed to be one of the important reforms brought in by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as he tried during his final stretch in office, in 2006, to wipe the sludge of Oil-for-Food from his Brioni suits.

When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in office, in 2007, he promised that his “first priority” at the U.N. would be to “restore trust.” He advertised that as part of this effort, he would follow through on Annan’s pledges of disclosure of personal finances by senior U.N. officials. That was a great idea, the urgent need for it underscored that same year by the indictment in New York’s Southern District of the former head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan, on charges of bribery and conspiracy to defraud the U.N. relief program he had run (Sevan, who left the U.S. and has not returned to face the charges, has denied any wrong-doing); and the conviction in New York federal court of a former head of the U.N. General Assembly’s budget oversight committee, Vladimir Kuznetsov. He was found guilty in 2007 of conspiring to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of kickbacks on U.N. procurement deals, while serving as the highest-ranking Russian official at the U.N.

But the “reform” that Annan bequeathed, and Ban has run with, is a system in which what is mainly disclosed by U.N. management is that almost nothing is disclosed (yes, you read that right). Top U.N. officials are supposed to render up information in-house about their finances. This is done in ways so confidential that even the U.N.’s Ethics Office, which administers the program, is not privy to the details. Senior staffers are then allowed to choose for themselves whether any information at all about their finances will be released to the public. This has resulted in some officials, such as Annan’s former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza (who has lingered at the U.N. in New York as a “special adviser” to Ban Ki-Moon) filing a public disclosure form in which he does nothing more than check a box, confirming that he has chosen “to maintain the confidentiality of the information disclosed by me.”

Some of the more forthcoming officials do choose to disclose slightly more than merely a refusal to disclose. Even then, it’s done in a format so abbreviated and generic that it provides almost no information. The U.N.’s entire public disclosure form runs to a single page, with no actual dollar amounts listed. Ban himself, for instance, filled out a form for 2009 which says his assets consist of an apartment and two lots of land in South Korea. What are these worth? There’s no clue.

Under the heading of “Ethical Standards,” such farcical “disclosures,” from dozens of senior U.N. officials worldwide, are posted on Ban Ki-moon’s official U.N. web site. Until now, I thought the Riza-style approach of utterly non-disclosing disclosure took the cake.

But in revisiting the site recently, I came across an entry that is in some ways even more tantalizing. That would be the form filed for 2009 by the director-general of the U.N. Office at Geneva, Sergei Ordzhonikidze. A former Soviet and then Russian diplomat, Ordzhonikidze was appointed in 2002 by Kofi Annan to head the U.N.’s palatial spread in Geneva, where last year alone he managed a budget of $227 million. (The U.N. Office at Geneva is home to the lavishly maintained Human Rights Council, among other U.N exotica).

Ordzhonikidze accounts directly to the U.N. Secretary-General, and serves as Ban’s representative in Geneva. When Ban Ki-moon’s web pages began featuring the “disclosure” forms, Ordzhonikidze for 2007 and 2008 was among the U.N. officials willing to list his assets. But he said they consisted solely of “Bank Savings accounts.” He listed nothing else. How much was in those savings accounts? Where in the world were they held? That’s a level of detail which UN public “disclosure” doesn’t bother with.

But here’s the intriguing bit. For the most recent filing, for 2009, Ordzhonikidze’s assets have apparently changed. He no longer lists even “Bank Savings accounts.” Under assets, he lists “Nil.” Likewise, under the other five categories, he also lists “Nil.” Apparently, he has gone from having assets that consisted solely of savings accounts to having no assets at all — or at least nothing worth more than $10,000, which is the minimum bar for disclosure. No house, no substantial possessions, no profits from the sale of personal property, no assets whatsoever. For that matter, no liabilities, either. No nothin’, just “Nil, Nil, Nil, Nil, Nil, Nil.”

What’s going on? After years of service pulling in a U.N. salary well into six-figures and loaded with perks, while running a U.N. complex that features a nine-figure budget and peacocks on the manicured lawns, has the director-general of the U.N. Office at Geneva been somehow abruptly left with no finances of his own to report? (Queried by email about this, a spokesperson for the U.N. in Geneva said Ordzhonikidze was traveling and could not be reached in time for this article.)

Or has Ban’s promise of U.N. transparency devolved to where he and his top team members, under the label of ”public disclosure,” routinely disclose either next-to-nothing or “Nil”? If U.S. law makers are ready to try again, can they get the candor the U.N. has repeatedly promised and failed to deliver? It would be worth finding out.