Resisting the United Nations

By Michael J. Totten

There is no love for the United Nations in Kosovo.

Kosovo is the fourth country I've visited where the UN has or has had a key role, and in only one of them – Lebanon – is the UN not despised by just about everyone. In Lebanon the UN has so little power to make a difference one way or the other that any anger at the institution would largely be pointless. In Bosnia, though, UN “peacekeepers” stood by impotently while genocide and ethnic-cleansing campaigns were carried out right in front of them. The UN's Oil for Food program was thoroughly corrupted by Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq at the expense of just about everybody who lives there. Kosovo, meanwhile, declared independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008, but the elected government is still subordinate to the almost universally despised UN bureaucrats who are the real power. Many Kosovars insist the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is actually a dictatorship.

Vetevendosje – “self-determination” in Albanian – was formed as a non-violent civil resistance movement against UN rule in a country that is supposed to be sovereign. Recently the European Union, which announced its own mission in Kosovo without being invited, was added to the list of opponents, but the UN remains the primary target. I attended one of Vetevendosje's rallies as an observer which began as a long march through the streets of Kosovo's capital Prishtina and ended at the United Nations headquarters where activists dumped a truckload of garbage inside the gate and hosed down the walls of the compound with sewage.

I spoke to Vetevendosje leader Albin Kurti and activist Alex Channer in their office the day before the rally in Prishtina's bohemian Pejton neighborhood.

“So basically you are opposing the UN rule here, and the EU,” I said.

“Yes,” Kurti said, “because they are going to be installed here from above without having the previous consent of the people.”

“There was no referendum?” I said.

“No,” he said. “No referendum for their installment here, and also no referendum for the UN mission. And they are going to be above the law which they will by applying on us. Ironically the EU-elects will deal with the rule of law and will have the rule of law as their priority, but they themselves will be above the law.”

“Who decided that they are going to come in here?” I said.

“It was Martti Ahtisaari's plan, this Finnish diplomat who mediated between Prishtina and [Serbia's capital] Belgrade, he together with Javier Solana. Solana is in charge of security and Foreign Policy of the EU. They prepared a draft back in July of the year 2006, and that was included in a more detailed form by Ahtisaari in his proposal.”

“And Serbia agreed to this?” I said.

“No,” he said. “Serbia did not. But the Albanian politicians did. They don’t ask because then they would have to ask again later on, and then we could change our mind. It is a mission that would be totally unaccountable to us. There is no watch dog, and in this civilian group that is going to supervise us, the ICO, the International Civilian Office, has this Peter Feith, he is there as well. So basically he is going to watch himself.”

“So should I assume that if Kosovo is invited to join the EU the way the other countries have, you would say no?” I said.

“We wouldn’t say no,” he said. “We want Kosovo to be included in the EU because we are part of European soil. But as things stand now, they wouldn’t ask us at all, they would have to ask themselves because this is the EU mission. Even so, UNMIK is still here.”

UNMIK is the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. It has been the de-facto government of Kosovo since the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade lost control at the end of the 1999 war. Kosovo has its own nominal government, but it has little power.

“So you have UN rule,” Kurti continued, “which is not leaving, and you have the ICO and EU-elects about to come. They are doubling the bureaucracy here. And we are stuck because we depend on their consensus. That means we depend on their lowest common denominator. What they care about is stability, never development or progress. For them, a crisis is only an explosion of crisis. If there is huge unemployment, poverty, they don’t care.”

“So if the EU is administering Kosovo's government,” I said, “what does that mean for Kosovo’s government? Will they be subordinate to the EU or operating in parallel?”

“They will be subordinate,” he said, “because Peter Feith will have the right to sack our ministers and change our laws. So he is going to supervise the government. Peter Feith hopes he will not be challenged to use his powers where he can simply dismantle the parliament, call new elections, change a certain minister, or say this law is not good after it has been passed in our assembly. They are hoping for self-censorship from our government in order not to be challenged and not to use those powers which would unmask them as the dictatorship they really are. It is a dictatorship, but they do not want to be seen as one, so they say we are here only to supervise. They talk a lot with our prime minister and ministers, do this, do that, in order not to be seen in the background as a sort of monarchy.”

“What is their reason for wanting to do this?” I said.

“They mediate between Prishtina and Belgrade after overthrowing Milosevic,” he said, “and they simply don’t use any more sticks, only carrots. Serbia is very aggressive, and in order to make sure that Serbia is not going to be indignant, they say Yes, Kosovo is independent, but don’t worry, it is us there. That is one reason I think they are here.

“Second,” he continued, “every bureaucracy seeks self perpetuation. A lot of people here have very high salaries, and they are like big fishes in a small pond. And they are more or less all of them into this process of privatization. Because we cannot touch them legally, they have free hands to do whatever they want. Many of them got very rich. 80 percent of the money from the international community that was poured onto Kosovo in these nine years went for technical assistance, seminars, conferences, and so on. A lot of money is in their hands this way. They direct it. It's an authoritarian law. So I think this is another reason why they’re here.”

“Does the US have any position on this,” I said, “or has is been decided only by Europe?”

“Well,” he said, “the US recognized Kosovo as an independent sovereign country, but here you have a foreign office, and I don’t think this American office is really in line with the policy of Washington. It is another small king here, and I feel that it is not that different from the European perspective because the focus has been shifted elsewhere. The US focus was here during NATO intervention and so on, but later on somehow, especially after 9/11, the focus is elsewhere, and I don’t think George W. Bush and the State Department know very well what goes on here. I think in Kosovo all of their diplomats over time don’t get better, but worse, because they see that they can be very powerful here. They have no one to balance them. Our government is very submissive, obedient, and weak. On the other hand I think there is a great deal of interest to buy into the economy of Kosovo, with its assets and resources because they have no real constraints here. We have been defined as a special case, which means they can experiment, and everything is going to be fine. It's heaven on earth for these kinds of diplomats.”

“What kinds of things have the EU and the UN done here that are bad, specifically?” I said. “I get your general point, but what are the practical results of all this?”

“No economic development at all,” he said. “Zero. No factories. No industry. Nothing. The fiscal policy is terrible. They promised us a market economy, and we ended up in a market without an economy. Then there is the internal division of Kosovo. The North is divided from the rest. The red is Serb areas, and here are new municipalities about to be created by Ahtisaari’s plan where the soft partition is strengthening itself.”

Kurti had a rough map of Kosovo on the wall behind the table we sat around. The Serb areas are shown in red, as Kurti said. The northern Serb areas are adjacent to Serbia.

“UNMIK has tolerated this,” he continued. “Now UNMIK is tolerating the elections of Serbia, so in a way UNMIK is tolerating Serbia’s intrusion and Serbian obstruction in Kosovo.”

Serbia held elections inside the Serb enclaves of Kosovo. These Kosovar Serbs did not elect representatives to send to Kosovo's capital Prishtina. They elected representatives to send to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, which is now, whether they like it or not, a foreign country. To get a handle on how strange this is, imagine if American citizens of Mexican descent in the formerly Mexican Southwestern United States voted for candidates to represent them in Mexico City.

“Why don't the EU and UN say no to Serbia?” I said. “Is it because they are trying to lure Serbia into the EU, or is it because they are afraid of more fighting?”

“I think they know very well that Serbia has not really been punished for the wars,” he said. “Serbian police and army forces killed around 200,000 non-Serbs. If one person killed 5 people, you have 40,000 serial murderers walking around inside Serbia. They are in the power structure, in the political parties, in the police, in the army. I think they are afraid of that. Instead of dealing with the principle of justice in Serbia, they are just playing this game of markets, who makes more pressure, who is more powerful, it is absolute real politics, and I think they care only for really short term stability. They don’t think any further than that. And they deal only with emergency situations. They don’t really see how structural is the cause of the conflict here. When they think about the security issue, stability, these are the words they use. Not freedom, liberty, development, and so on. They think in terms of troops they have and politicians they control, rather than in terms of the well being and situations of the ordinary citizens.”

The biggest problem with the UN and EU missions in Kosovo, as many locals see it, is that there is no proper government that is actually in charge of the country. There is no fully sovereign entity in Kosovo. The country's sovereignty is parceled out piece by piece to different bureaucracies.

“Of the things UNMIK did wrong here, and the most damaging for Kosovo, was two-fold,” Kurti said. “Apart from UNMIK's very existence, and now the EU’s mission, it creates this duality of institutions. And this duality makes vague the address of who is responsible for the people. So currently a Kosovo citizen, like myself, is not able to know who is responsible for a bad social position, for example, or a lack of money. If you ask UNMIK they say it’s your institution, if you ask our government they say Oh, it’s UNMIK. This duality makes no institutions be or feel responsible for anything that happened or did not happen in Kosovo. And secondly, when UNMIK was installed here, they took in their hands all the mechanisms for controlling the states. They control the police and all the judicial systems as well, and they tolerated corruption, and they blame us for being a corrupt society. It was they who should have acted against corruption because they have the mechanisms in their hands. I as a citizen have no mechanisms to control the government. In normal democratic countries, as a citizen you are able to punish your leaders for not defending your interests. Here we don’t have that mechanism.”

“Does the EU and UNMIK have a base of support here?” I said to Kurti.

“The popularity of UNMIK is bad,” he said. “But people link UNMIK with NATO intervention which is another issue. And they think okay, it is like an extended intervention of the world. NATO intervention saved us from Serbia, and now it is UNMIK. When people think of this they think of the first year of UNMIK, the reconstruction of buildings and houses, the emergency phase.”

Financial crisis hits world body: UN banks on empty pledges

By Thalif Deen at the united nations
NEW YORK - The financial crisis, which has continued to destabilise stock markets and undermine the global banking system, is expected to have a negative impact on the perpetually cash-strapped United Nations and its development activities -- sooner than later.

A group of seven countries -- the Central African Republic, the Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia and Tajikistan -- are already on the verge of losing their voting rights in the General Assembly for piling up arrears on their mandatory assessed contributions to the world body.
The assessed contributions for each of these seven countries is only $19,982 per year, the lowest benchmark to the world's poorest countries (in contrast to Sri Lanka, for example, which promptly pays its dues amounting to about $339,700 per year and India which coughs out $8.4 million annually). The rates are fixed under a formula based on the principle of "capacity to pay."


A broker trades sterling swaps on the dealing floor at ICAP, in London on Friday. Europe joined Asia's panic selling of stocks on Friday, knocking the benchmark world equity index to a 5-year trough, while the low-yielding yen jumped as fears grew that policymakers' efforts to contain the global financial crisis won't be enough. Reuters.

The largest single contribution of 22 percent of the UN budget comes from the United States, amounting to $440 million annually. Coincidentally, the US is also the largest single defaulter, but maintains a threshold to avoid losing its voting rights in the General Assembly. But the seven defaulters have been accumulating their arrears for more than two years -- and long before the crisis in the US economy last month and its subsequent negative fallout on Europe and the rest of the world.

At a meeting of the UN's Administrative and Budgetary Committee last week, there was a plea from the African Union that all seven countries should have their voting rights restored because the cash crisis facing them was beyond their control (a concession provided by Article 19 of the UN charter).

But the Committee was also warned that if the current economic recession hits developing nations, more and more countries will be defaulting in their payments to the world body and losing their voting rights.
Although all membership dues to the UN are mandatory, the funding for UN agencies such as the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) are voluntary. The bulk of the funding for these agencies, which are involved in social and economic development, comes primarily from the US, Japan and the Western European countries.
If the crisis continues, it is likely that at the upcoming annual pledging conference next month (where countries pledge their funds to the various UN agencies) most donors would reduce funding arguing that their countries are going through a recession.

Since self preservation is the first national priority in any domestic crisis -- Iceland being the first country as a whole to go bankrupt while other nations have suffered only the bankruptcies of their financial institutions -- the UN will be only a secondary concern in the current environment.

Another major casualty will be official development assistance (ODA) which is based on 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI). So far, only five out of 22 rich countries have met or surpassed the target: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. But with most GNI's expected to decline next year, so will ODA.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tried to put a positive spin on the negative fallout when he told reporters last week: "Everyone has felt the earthquake on Wall Street. But it has not shaken our resolve."
He said banks may be failing. "But the world's bottom billion can bank on us. We showed that last week. The global financial crisis may have over-shadowed our work, but it did not dominate it."

As proof, he pointed out that despite the market turmoil, the UN was able to raise an additional $16 billion in pledges, mostly to fight hunger and poverty worldwide. The generosity of these commitments was encouraging, given the economic climate. But the perennial question at the UN is: how many of these pledges are really delivered? In most instances, there is a huge gap between promises and delivery.
At last week's press conference, one of the reporters pointedly told the Secretary-General that the French Foreign Minister had said that if any of the rich G8 countries -- the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Canada and Russia -- says they are going to meet all their pledges during this financial crisis, they are lying.

"Has anybody handed you a cheque that actually gives you optimism that you are going to get the $16 billion? And what is the first threshold that you are going to reach when you understand whether you are going to get those pledges or not?" the Secretary-General was asked.

In response, the Secretary-General said the $16 billion was pledged while world leaders were discussing measures to address the global financial crisis. "Therefore, first of all, I am very much encouraged even during the crisis of these financial problems, that the leaders are committed to see the realization of the Millennium Development Goals."

That is a very important commitment, demonstrated by the leaders, he added. And that is the real good demonstration of their leadership. "I hope that this will be implemented."

Question: Are you sure this can be implemented? Are you going to see the money? There are so many pledges that have been taking place all the time, and they never happen actually.

Secretary-General: There are many monitoring mechanisms, when the member states make a commitment. It is true that there are always gaps between commitment and actual following of the funds. There is a time gap, but we have some monitoring mechanisms within the UN system. One important occasion will be the Doha Conference on Financing for Development (scheduled to take place in Qatar in late November). There, we will also have a very important occasion to discuss this issue on how to fund mobilized financing in addressing global challenges.

But in reality, the UN is likely to see very little of this money to fight hunger and poverty eradication thereby undermining the UN Millennium Development Goals with its 2015 deadline.

Let UNDP manage Nuclear Extortion Racket Derivates (NERD)

Let’s Have Some Fun With the Terror List: How About Nuclear Extortion Racket Derivatives?

by Claudia Rosett

While everyone’s watching the markets and the election, the State Department – by now the Fannie Mae of foreign policy — is setting us up for the next crisis. That one is going to involve things possibly even worse than mortgage defaults, such as missiles and nuclear bombs.

At the core of that crisis, when things really start to crater, will be Iran. But in times to come, when analysts (working by candlelight in their underground shafts) get around to asking the ritual questions (you know them well: Who let this happen? Why didn’t we see it coming?) they will also point to the leading edge of the wreck. That would be the Bush administration policy of the past few years on North Korea. It is Kim Jong Il (dead or alive) who has been setting the pace for racketeering rogue regimes and wannabe nuclear extortionists everywhere. If — over the objections of the U.S., Europe, Japan and anyone else who wants to play — he can counterfeit U.S. currency, wheel and deal in missiles and nuclear technology, make and test nuclear bombs, offer a piece of the action to Syria and Iran, and get paid by America for his pains, well then, who can’t?

Here’s how Nuclear Extortion 101 works. North Korea tests some missiles, revs up its Yongbyon reactor, and America & friends pay Kim to stop. He pockets the bribe, reneges on the deal, and repeats the threat. We pay, he pockets… and here we go again: 

Word is leaking out of Washington that Condoleezza Rice is on the verge of removing North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, with an announcement imminent.

Why? It’s not because North Korea has gone out the terror business. If anything, Pyongyang –with considerable success — appears to be quite busy at the moment terrorizing the U.S. State Department. North Korea has learned that Rice and her special envoy, Chris Hill, baseball cap in hand, will do just about anything (pay, wait, fudge, dissemble, cover up, roll over, beg) to keep alive the pretense of a nuclear disarmament deal which from the start was about as solid as today’s mortgage derivatives market.

North Korea wants off the terror list. The State Department, having showered Kim with gifts since mid-2007, finally balked, for the very good reason that North Korea refuses to agree to any system that might let inspectors actually verify what’s going on with its nuclear ventures (let alone take away the bombs). So North Korea is now threatening to re-start its Yongbyon reactor, and letting out rumbles about preparations to test another nuclear weapon. This is a way of telling the United States to jump. And if Rice responds to this blackmail by taking North Korea off the terror list, what she and Hill and President Bush (is he still there?) will really be saying to Pyongyang is: How high?

Fox News is reporting that in preparing to caper to North Korea’s tune, State has cut its own verification bureau out of the loop. Looks like U.S. policy has morphed from “trust, but verify” to “trust, and pay the blackmail.”

The same otherwise worthy Fox report includes an interesting sentence, culled from the conventional wisdom of the diplomatic circuit: “Removing North Korea from the terror list would be a major step in mending relations between the reclusive communist nation and the United States, though it would also come amid concerns about North Korea’s weapons program.”

Aha… so it’s the terror list that’s caused all that friction between North Korea and the U.S.? Hey, if all we have to do to be safe from North Korea is take them off the terror list, a whole industry awaits. Make the whole world safe. Take everyone off the terror list. But why stop there? Just scrap the entire idea of a terror list.

I do have a suggestion for what we might create in its place. To play its part in the growing global market in nuclear extortion that the Condi-and-Chris legacy is even now engendering, America is going to have to do a lot of groveling, and appropriate a lot of tax money – for free food, free fuel (nuclear or otherwise) and other doo-dads — to pay off rogue regimes that are already lining up to cash in on this bonanza.

So how about State creating a public list of terror-loving governments to which America sends pay-offs in hope of stopping their nuclear weapons programs. Call it the Nuclear Extortion Racket List. That way, instead of Chris Hill cutting secret deals while back-slapping North Koreans in Berlin and touring Yongbyon, there could at least be some better planning, and accountability. There could be clear budgets assigned to how much in pay-offs  — whether in cash, kind or diplomatic concessions — should go to North Korea, to Iran, to Syria…or, well, imagine the possibilities.

Heck, the way U.S. policy is going, this has all the makings of a broad and deep emerging market. A sort of Subprime for Rogue States.

Of course, the startup costs for a nuclear weapons program are considerable. So maybe the World Bank and the UN Development Program could be recruited to figure out how to issue shares in the proposed nuclear extortion rackets of developing economies. We could have Cuba’s initial public offering, Khartoum extortion bonds. And there’s no reason for terrorist groups to be excluded from the action just because they happen to be part of the private sector. There is scope here for Al-Qaeda-Hezbollah extortion-racket swaps. And no reason that the American taxpayer should be cut out of this, if he wants to speculate on the chance of getting back some of his own money.

Welcome to the 21st century, State Department style. Congratulations, Chris and Condi. How long before we can sit at our computers and trade Nuclear Extortion Racket derivatives? .. at least until the lights go out.

Probe of Attack on UN in Algiers Cities Failings of 10 Workers

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- An inquiry into the December 2007 terrorist bombing of the United Nations' headquarters in Algiers cited 10 staff members for security failings that contributed to the attack that killed 17 of their co-workers.

The independent investigation, ordered in June by Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, reported ``dysfunction'' of the UN security system due to a lack of resources, training, supervision and accountability. It described ``politicization'' by the government of Algeria and the UN in setting the level of security at the time of the bombing.

``There were significant lapses in judgment and performance,'' a summary of the panel's 88-page report said today. ``There was a lack of adequate supervision and guidance on the part of senior managers.'' It said disciplinary action against four persons and measures to correct the mistakes of six others were recommended to Ban.

The UN didn't release the report itself because of security concerns and respect for due process in disciplinary actions under consideration, spokeswomanMichele Montas said. The names of the UN workers weren't included in the summary.

Ralph Zacklin, the former assistant secretary-general for legal affairs who directed the inquiry, said the report didn't fault either Ban or David Veness, the UN security chief who quit in June before the release of a report on an investigation led by former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi.

The summary said Veness was given ``responsibility without authority.''

Baghdad Bombing

The Dec. 11 attack was the deadliest against the world body since the 2003 bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people, including former Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Al-Qaeda in North Africa claimed responsibility for the Algiers attack as well as the deaths of 50 people in a separate bombing in the city that day.

Zacklin told reporters the UN lowered the security level in Algiers to Phase 1 (the lowest of five levels) in June 2006 because the government of Algeria wasn't ``happy'' with the previous Phase 3 status.

Mourad Benmehidi, Algeria's ambassador to the UN, had no comment on the report.

Brahimi's report said the UN needed a ``change in culture'' to deal with increasing global terrorist dangers connected to the view that the organization has become ``an instrument of powerful member states to advance agendas that serve their own interests rather than those of the global community of nations.''

It said senior UN officials failed to respond to warnings of a possible attack from Babacar Ndiaye, the security adviser in the Algiers office. It described poor communication between Algiers and UN headquarters in New York and the refusal of local government leaders to make security improvements sought by the UN.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations atwvarner@bloomberg.net

UNDP staff face reprimands on Algiers security lapses

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A report on security lapses before the 2007 bombing of U.N. offices in Algiers recommends reprimands or disciplinary action against 12 U.N. employees, a U.N. investigator said on Wednesday.

The car bombing, which has been claimed by al Qaeda's North Africa wing, killed 17 U.N. staff and raised questions about security of U.N. operations around the world.

The report said there were "significant lapses in judgment and performance," a lack of supervision by senior managers preoccupied with Iraq and other countries and a badly designed security system subject to politicization.

Britain's David Veness, who was under-secretary-general for safety and security at the time, resigned in June after an earlier inquiry criticized failures in his department.

Ralph Zacklin, who headed a separate panel charged with assigning blame for lapses contributing to the attack, said the panel recommended administrative measures -- which could be as little as a letter of reprimand -- against six individuals.

Four more could face more serious disciplinary action, he said.

"There were significant lapses in judgment and performance on the part of those involved," a summary of the report said, pointing to a lack of supervision by senior managers who were preoccupied with Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan.

"Algeria was not on the radar screen," it said.

Zacklin said it would be for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to decide exactly what action the 12 individuals would face.

"It's for him to look at our report, decide whether or not he wishes to follow our recommendations," Zacklin told a news conference. "He has the discretion to do that."

Zacklin said the five-member panel also recommended assigning collective responsibility to the security management team in Algiers, a body which includes representatives from all U.N. agencies on the ground and which was supposed to coordinate security measures in the field.

THREAT LEVEL

An earlier report by a panel led by Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi had criticized the lack of a close working relationship between Algerian and U.N. officials on security, as well as the internal working of U.N. security systems.

The Brahimi report said management had ignored warnings about potential threats in Algiers, had not supported security efforts by U.N. officials there and had not approached Algeria's U.N. mission to seek better protection.

Zacklin said the accountability panel's report mirrored much of that criticism. For example, he said the U.N. system of alert levels was politicized.

Zacklin said many countries disliked having a high level of security at U.N. facilities because it "indicates that the country is not secure." In the case of Algeria, he said, the government had pressed for the threat level to be reduced.

Zacklin declined to name the individuals facing possible action, but said Ban himself was not one of them.

He added that the panel "appreciated" Veness' decision to resign after the Brahimi report.

A summary of the report, which was not released in full for reasons of security and privacy while the cases are processed, said the panel made one "positive finding" about a security adviser in Algiers who was killed in the bombing.

Earlier this year the widow of Babacar Ndiaye of Senegal, the head of U.N. security in Algiers who was killed in the attack, said her husband had pleaded with U.N.

'Dyfunctional' UN security led to Algiers bombing: panel

United Nations (PTI): A dysfunctional United Nations security management system, lack of adequate supervision, and significant lapses in judgment and performance played a major role in the 2007 terrorist bombing on UN offices in Algiers in which 17 staff members were killed, a probe panel has concluded.

The independent panel, which released a summery of its report on Wednesday, blamed politicisation of the security system for the deadly incident.

Officials explained that aggressive security measures by the UN are resented by the countries as they show they are insecure, something which no member state wants to admit.

Stating that politicisation seriously compromised the security, the panel said preoccupation of UN security officials with countries like Afghanistan and Iraq led to neglect of its offices in Algiers.

"The dysfunction of the present system is not attributable to a lack of resources alone," the panel said, recommending administrative action against six individuals and disciplinary proceedings against four others. "It is also attributable to a failure on the part of those who designed it and those who implemented it."

The names of the officials were not released as, a spokesperson said, they would be subjected to an inquiry to determine what action should be taken.

The Independent Panel on Accountability, headed by former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Ralph Zacklin, was set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June to examine whether any staff should be held individually accountable for the 2007 attack.

Algeria: UN slammed for poor response to 2007 bomb attack

Security

Algeria: UN slammed for poor response to 2007 bomb attack

New York, 9 Oct. (AKI) - Bad management, poor supervision and training, and significant lapses in judgement all played a major role in the devastating 2007 terrorist bombings that targeted the United Nations offices in Algiers, an independent panel has found.

Seventeen staff members were killed in the brutal attack carried out by a local group linked to Al-Qaeda in December 2007.

The independent panel on accountability, led by former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Ralph Zacklin, was set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June to look into the response to the 2007 attack.

The panel found that the UN phase system that graded security risks in Algeria had been “seriously compromised” through politicisation. 

It also accused UN security officials of having a preoccupation with countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, instead of Algeria.

“The dysfunction of the present system is not attributable to a lack of resources alone,” the panel said.

“It is also attributable to a failure on the part of those who designed it and those who implemented it.”

Zacklin told a media conference that an administrative measure could be something as simple as a letter of reprimand while a disciplinary action could be something as serious as a dismissal. 

The panel also recommended an administrative measure against “an organ of collective responsibility,” in this case the UN Security Management Team in Algiers.

The report, which was presented to Ban cited a “marked reluctance” of some of those interviewed to accept the panel’s procedures and methods of work. 

U.N. faults 7 in Algeria bombing

Betsy Pisik

EXCLUSIVE:

UNITED NATIONS | An internal report assigns blame to at least seven U.N. officials for one of the organization's greatest security breakdowns ever — the Dec. 11 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Algeria in which 17 staffers died.

The report, slated for release Wednesday, also criticizes the Algerian government, according to multiple sources who have been briefed on its contents.

It says Algerian officials ignored requests by the Algiers-based U.N. staff for additional security barriers and other preventive measures, even after a local al Qaeda group publicly demonized the presence of international organizations in the city.

The assessment — the organization's third on the bombing — was written by a five-member panel led by former U.N. legal adviser Ralph Zacklin.

The Zacklin report, unlike the two previous U.N. inquiries, was intended to assign responsibility within the U.N. security system for the failure to prevent or prepare for the attack, in which an explosives-laden truck rammed into the U.N. office in a residential area, killing 17 U.N. staffers, most of them Algerian. Seven bystanders also were killed.

Those named in the report include Diana Russler, second in command of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security (DSS); Gerard Martinez, director of regional affairs; and U.N. Development Program Resident Representative Marc Destanne de Bernis, who was the senior U.N. official in Algiers at the time.

The two earlier U.N. investigations found that Mr. de Bernis may not have believed in the severity or likelihood of an attack, and did not press the Algerian authorities hard enough to act on those concerns.

Sources said six of those named are DSS staffers and that three of them could receive disciplinary action, including dismissal, as ordered by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Mr. de Bernis and any others named who work for the UNDP or other independent U.N. agency will be subject to their own executives' authority.

The United Nations declined to comment ahead of the release of the closely held report, as did two of those named who were contacted by The Washington Times.

But the organization has been taking to heart the lessons of the Algerian attack and a 2003 bombing in Baghdad.

Last week, DSS increased the risk assessment for its Pakistan operations to Phase III from Phase I, sending home the families of international staff. It also has begun moving its Islamabad offices inside the capital's heavily fortified "diplomatic zone."

The Algerian government has made sweeps and arrested people suspected of having ties to the group Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, or AQIM, which claimed responsibility for the Dec. 11 attack and many other bombings since.

At the time, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem called off a Cabinet meeting to visit hospitals where the injured were being treated.

"These are crimes that targeted innocent people," he told the BBC then. "Nothing can justify the crime."

In the first internal U.N. investigation, released in January, U.N. security chief David Veness said the Algerian Interior Ministry had conceded it had knowledge of an impending attack after finding a diagram of the U.N. compound on a cell phone seized after an earlier bombing.

Under the U.N. Charter and other agreements, the host country bears primary responsibility for ensuring the safety of U.N. staff and premises. Nonetheless, it is unusual for a U.N. report to single out a member country for fault.

"The hostile intent against the United Nations in Algeria was present and well known before the attack," wrote Mr. Veness, who tendered his resignation after completing his report.

Mr. Veness, who is still on the job despite the resignation offer, noted in his report that Algiers-based security officer Babacar Ndiaye, who died in the blast, had been reporting his concerns to headquarters as early as April 2007.

Despite those warnings, the U.N. office was listed as a Phase I low security risk at the time of the bombing, in large part because the Algerian government did not want its reputation tarnished among the corporations and governments with which it seeks to do business.

Mr. Ndiaye had argued for raising the threat level, which would call for extra barricades and enhanced surveillance.

A second report on DSS, released in June by veteran U.N. diplomat and former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi, confirmed that the U.N. headquarters had received Mr. Ndiaye's warnings as well as public source information of an impending attack.

Mr. Brahimi found that the department had not treated those pleas for support and advice as urgent.

He also faulted an operation he described as rigidly hierarchical, riven by turf wars and unwilling to pass along bad news.

United Nations Faces Billions in Retiree Health Care Obligations

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

By George Russell

The United Nations is staring at a multi-billion-dollar shortfall in unfunded health insurance obligations to past and present employees, a gaping financial deficit that has been growing rapidly while the U.N. dithered for the past five years.

According to internal documents examined by FOX News, the U.N. has roughly $2.4 billion in unpaid retirement health insurance obligations for its staff alone, as of the end of 2007. When the sprawling U.N. system of programs and organizations around the world is thrown in, the total could be more than $4.9 billion, as tallied in a March 2007 report.

Click here to see the total.

Not all parts of the U.N. universe are equally affected by the health insurance crisis. The $5 billion United Nations Development Program, for example, had a liability of roughly $466 million at the end of 2007, but has since funded more than half of it. At the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the liability hit was $308 million, at a time when the agency's global expenditures have been rapidly increasing.

The U.N.'s health insurance deficit is similar to problems that have threatened to crush private sector organizations. U.S. automakers, which granted gold-plated pension deals to their retiring employees years ago, are still struggling to fund those payments, even as American car sales have dwindled.

So far, the U.N. has not made up its mind what to do about the retirement health insurance issue. The main reason: the ugly realization that it will either have to ask member states who already fund its operations to increase their funding, or force staffers who pay 8 percent of their current salaries toward health care costs, to cough up vastly more than they already do. Or perhaps some variation on those two.

In an effort to begin to get the mammoth deficit under control, the U.N. has raised the number of years of service employees must put in before qualifying for the lifetime retirement health insurance benefit from five years to 10.

In some of the financial scenarios that the U.N.'s top bureaucrats have been examining for years in order to deal with the issue, the money required to level the health insurance mountain runs to hundreds of millions of additional dollars per year — for decades.

And at a time of global economic meltdown and financial turmoil, there is no guarantee that U.N. member states will be willing to bail out the world body.

Meantime, the problem continues to compound, while the U.N. Secretariat doles out roughly $98 million every two years (the U.N. has a biennial budget cycle) to fund in pay-as-you-go health-care funding for its current pensioners — similar to the way the U.S. handles its massive Social Security deficit. At the same time, U.N. management is scrambling for ways to lower the staggering bill, or perhaps continues to kick the problem down the road, as it already has done for years.

Without a fix, the total gap is likely to become even more unmanageable, and taking it off the books even more expensive than it already is.

The mammoth unfunded retirement health insurance problem is once again on the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly this month, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expected to come up with answers. According to a spokesman for Ban's office, an updated report on the problem and proposed solutions "will be issued shortly."

According to a variety of U.N. internal documents examined by FOX News, various solutions have been on the table since 2003. These have included:

• Hitting up member states — which means the two-dozen or so, led by the U.S., that pay most of the U.N.'s assessment bills — to cough up the $2.4 billion in one mega-payment — and then pay $177 million more every two years to keep the debt from rising again;

• spreading the pain of debt reduction across 24 to 26 years, in $550 million increments, with even more additional dollops of cash till required to keep the system above water;

• slapping an additional payroll charge against U.N. employee salaries that would average roughly 13.8 percent per person, again, for decades.

All three of those alternatives were judged to be "not considered practicable," by the U.N.'s own Board of Auditors in a report issued in early 2007.

Click here to see the Board of Auditors report.

Yet another option considered was to raid the U.N. peacekeeping budget to the tune of more than $660 million annually for 25 to 30 years, and still roughly triple the amount that the U.N. takes from employees' salaries, which currently runs at anywhere from 4 percent to 8 percent. The peacekeeping contributions have been justified in U.N. documents as recognition that the U.N.'s peacekeeping forces, which have grown rapidly in size in the past decade, have become major consumers of retirement health care services.

In the past, the suggested remedies for the deficit have also included such dubious ideas as taking money from peacekeeping projects that had ended with budget surpluses on the books — money that would normally be returned to the nations that gave it. This idea was dubbed an "inappropriate financial management practice," in one report examined by FOX News.

The option most recently favored, as outlined in a report by the U.N.'s board of auditors last year, calls for a grab bag of measures, including a onetime contribution of $503.5 million from peacekeeping, taking money from various medical benefit reserves, plus a further 8 percent charge against employee salaries.

Even that would not be enough, the auditor's report notes. Funding the liabilities would still require a yearly infusion of $102.7 million from the U.N.'s regular budget, plus the addition of any savings from other U.N. operations that shut down with a surplus.

(The report delicately calls the money shifted from accounts in surplus "fortuitous savings which would otherwise be returned to the Member States.")

The chief virtue of the last funding option is that it wouldn't require the U.N. to go back to its members asking for a half-billion extra dollars.

Such a request would come after Secretary General Ban successfully appealed only in September to U.N. member states, led by the U.S., for an additional $16.2 billion in a pledge to help the U.N. meet its ambitious environmental and anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals.

What has triggered a new sense of urgency in the U.N.'s consideration of the funding black hole is, ironically enough, a change in its accounting procedures that was instituted to ensure greater transparency in its operations.

Prior to that accounting change, which only hit the U.N.'s financial statements at the end of 2007, the retirement health care liability was not carried on the U.N.'s books as anything but a footnote to its financial statements — and thus never hit the organization's formal bottom line.

Actual funding of retirement health care insurance costs were handled as they still are, on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no regard for the longer term factors such as an aging and expanding U.N. work force.

That changed in 2006 when the U.N. adopted what are known as International Public Sector Accounting Standards. These demand that the full cost of such long term liabilities be recognized as realities that needed to be funded.

In other words, the liability was already there; the accounting standards put new pressure on the U.N. to deal with it.

Click here to see the suggestion that a decision come this year.

But while the accounting change has raised the funding of those health care costs to the level of a crisis issue, the fact is that the General Assembly has known about the looming problem for a decade.

A General Assembly resolution passed in May of last year noted that it had taken seven years for the U.N. Secretary General's staff to prepare an initial report on the extent of the liability, after an initial Assembly request in 1997.

In that 2003 report, the liabilities were only about $1.5 billion. In an updated report in 2005, they had risen to $2.07 billion.

In each case, after being presented with the report, the General Assembly decided to ask for more information before taking action — in effect, continuing to sweep the problem under the rug.

Dual roles said to put U.N. staffers at risk

Betsy Pisik (Contact)

Thursday, October 9, 2008

UNITED NATIONS | Inherently flawed security is compromising the safety of tens of thousands of U.N. employees around the world, according to the organization's third report on the fatal Dec. 11 bombing of U.N. offices in Algiers.

Algeria, where an explosives-packed truck bomb killed 24, "was not on the radar screen" for U.N. security officials who, said the authors of the report, "were preoccupied with Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan."

Ralph Zacklin, former U.N. legal adviser, led the five-person inquiry to assign responsibility for the attack. Seventeen of those killed were U.N. staffers.

On Sunday, Mr. Zacklin's panel submitted to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon an 88-page report with thousands of pages of annexes.

Mr. Ban's office has refused to release that document for security and privacy concerns, but on Wednesday distributed a four-page summary of the report.

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Dec. 11, 2007, a truck bomb barreled past a minimal barrier and slammed into an office used by several U.N. agencies.

Fire engulfed the building. In addition to those killed, scores were injured. Most were Algerian.

Responsibility was quickly claimed by a local insurgency called al Qaeda in the Maghreb, a group that had been publicly agitating against the presence of the United Nations and other foreign organizations in Algeria.

There had been several bombings in the capital over the preceding months that were claimed by the same group.

Nonetheless, out of courtesy to the Algerian government's political sensibilities, U.N. officials did not raise the threat assessment, nor vigorously demand additional security measures to be put in place, the report said.

Despite these threats, and the repeated pleas for assistance by local security officer Babacar Ndiaye to the U.N. Department of Safety and Security (DSS) in New York, nothing happened.

Mr. Ndiaye was killed in the explosion.

Marc de Bernis of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) was responsible for conveying security concerns to the Algerian government because he was the most senior official at the post. He was also responsible for running his agency's programs in the region.

Mr. Zacklin said this dual tasking, standard in most U.N. duty stations, is a "design flaw" that must changed.

"It's not hard to imagine that a person wearing two hats may find himself or herself in conflict," he said.

Mr. de Bernis, a French national who has since been posted by UNDP to Brussels, is currently on medical leave, according to a UNDP spokesman.

The UNDP Wednesday acknowledged the difficulty of the post.

"As Mr. Zacklin said, there are clearly built-in tensions between the twin responsibilities, of security and program delivery, assigned to the head of a U.N. field office," UNDP spokesman Stephane Dujarric wrote in an e-mail. "Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we address these built-in ambiguities in the U.N. system's security architecture so as to better clarify issues of functional and personal roles and responsibilities in the future."

The Zacklin panel also found that at U.N. headquarters in New York, the security department was hobbled by poor training and recruitment, limited resources and other problems.

Two previous U.N. reports on the Algeria bombing also paint a grim picture of an understaffed department constrained by hierarchy and turf wars, in which bad news was unwelcome.

UN Report on Algiers Bombing Is Withheld, Role of UNDP In Lower Defenses Too

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, October 8 -- The UN inquiry that was supposed put to rest issues surrounding the deadly bombing of UN premises in Algiers in December 2007 has in fact only raised more questions. The head of the so-called Accountability Panel, Ralph Zacklin, told Inner City Press on October 8 that he could not say if any settlements have been paid out, and would not confirm who was being recommended for discipline. 

  Inner City Press asked about UN Development Program official Marc de Bernis, who sources say failed to act on requests by UN staffer Babacar Ndiaye to install waist-high metal barricades that can be raised and retracted, and did not raise the security phase above "One," the lowest of five numeric ratings. Zacklin on Wednesday confirmed that the level had been lowered to "One" in June 2006 at the urging of Algeria's government; he said that both Algeria and the UN had engaged in "politicization" in reducing the security phase to One.

  This word, Politicized, appeared in the mere four page summary that, instead of the report, was provided. When Inner City Press asked Zacklin about the word and summary, he said, that is not my summary, it was written by the Secretary-General's Office. One wag wondered if that's not the case for the Report as a whole.

   So who is responsible?  First Zacklin said that as a matter of due process, he would not name names. Then he said there is a paragraph in his 88-page report, which is being withheld, on outgoing Security Chief David Veness.  But when Inner City Press asked if there is a paragraph on UNDP or Marc de Bernis, Zacklin declined to answer, saying only that de Bernis was reviewed.  Video here, from Minute 55:57.

Zacklin, on right, long-time UN consigliere didn't even write his own summary

 So where's the accountability? And if the UN is so committed to due process, why were the 54 staff members subject to compulsory interview by Zacklin's panel not allowed counsel or even Staff Union representation? "Because it was a fact finding inquiry," Zacklin said, adding that denying representation was "in accordance with previous practice" at the UN. Video here, from Minute 27:18. But why not have the right to counsel?

   Since the Report is being withheld, along with the names, it is difficult to see what has changed or been fixed since the bombing. In fact, not enough was changed after the Baghdad bombing of UN premises. Just before that, a long-time staffer tells Inner City Press, UN Security refuses to consider providing a more security plane to fly the 15 Ambassadors on the Security Council. Eventually, these Ambassadors flew in a German and not UN plane. After the Baghdad bombing, UN Security apologized. Too little, too late.

  For the families of the victims, what has been paid? Zacklin told Inner City Press that Ban Ki-moon spokesperson could say. She in turn merely referred Inner City Press to UNDP. But they have declined a question on October 7 for Marc de Bernis' present location and status. And UNDP has not provided the detail of payments to families of victims of a recent helicopter crash in the Congo. The UN refuses to answer questions, then claims to be holding itself accountable.

Footnote: In fairness to Zacklin, other sources of Inner City Press describe him fighting against the expulsion of UN staff from such countries as Eritrea. But to not even write or stand behind the summary of its report is telling.

Footnote: Catch this reporter today on Icelandic television, www.ruv.is

Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on UN, bailout, MDGs.

As Serbia Wins UN Vote, Montenegro Mysteries, UNDP and Napalm, Kosovo Trust Agency

UNITED NATIONS, October 8 -- In the run up to Serbia's 77--74-6 win on its General Assembly resolution to get an International Court of Justice opinion on the legality of Kosovo's independence, Montenegro's President Filip Vujanovic on October 7 said his country "could not delay" granting recognition to Kosovo. Serb foreign minister Vuk Jeremic said "Serbia will not sit with its hands crossed" if Montenegro took the recognition route. Then on October 8, Montenegro was recorded as voting for Serbia's resolution. After the General Assembly session, Inner City Press asked Jeremic about this, and about the controversy surrounding the Kosovo Trust Agency, missing money, missing documents. Video here.

  Jeremic responded that Serbia's neighbors should be all the more understanding of the need for this Court ruling, but that some like Montenegro were moving to recognize Kosovo under pressure, mostly by the United States which along with five small island friends voted against Serbia.  But what explains Montenegro's pro-Serbia vote? Some say its a non-Presidential, non-U.S. influence in Montenegro, a Russian businessman who controls a large part of the Montenegrin economy: Oleg Deripasca. 

  Others, more cynical yet, say there's a connection between Serbia now agreeing in essence to consent to the EU's EULEX force and swing votes like Montenegro's, from absention over to yes.  Jeremic was asked about financiers, but said that's a job for investigative reporters.

  To Inner City Press, this then is a call to action, to follow up on such stories as the UN Development Program's funneling of George Soros' charity's funding to Georgian president Saakashvili.  

Montenegro's flag goes up in 2006, Kosovo Trust Agency not shown

  As it happens, Inner City Press has asked UNDP some questions about its operations in Montenegro, yielding for now only this response:

"Yes, UNDP is involved in the disposal of hazardous toxic waste in Montenegro (Liquid Propellant and Napalm). This is a joint project of the Government of Montenegro, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and UNDP. This project is designed to dispose of this toxic hazardous waste in a safe, efficient and effective way that complies, wherever achievable, with all relevant international and EU environmental and safety legislation, and hence to existing international 'best practice.'"

  Now dealing in napalm is withing UNDP's mandate is not clear. On the Kosovo Trust Agency, Jeremic said the money cannot simply pass from the UN to the "de facto" or self-styled Kosovo leadership. He said he was meeting with UN envoy Zanier on just this topic right after the briefing.

Footnotes on the vote: Beyond Montenegro's surprising vote, Liechtenstein, Greece, Cyprus, Spain , Slovakia and Iceland voted yes. Bosnia, Iraq and Guinea Bissau were among those listed as absent. Click here for an Inner City Press story today about Iceland's chances of winning a Security Council seat.

Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on UN, bailout, MDGs.