The US and the UN - Mark Malloch Brown Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Mark Malloch Brown is sometimes mentioned as a dark horse candidate to succeed in Annan in the event that all else fails and there's no consensus on an Asian candidate.  He's speaking now.  He's said he's gonna talk about the grievous consequences of America's failure to properly engage with the UN.  But he's preaching to the choir here.

He calls Annan the UN's best SYG ever, but its his boss.   He's saying that the UN's ability to carry out critical functions is being undermined by the lack of US leadership, using the human rights council as an example.  I'm gonna move my seat in the hope of challenging him with a question when he's done.  This is all true, but beside the point.  Yes, we need to figure out how to rebuild a consensus around the UN, but that process will require addressing some of the organizations' limitations.

He argues that the UN's role is a secret in middle America because of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's disinformation campaigns.  That's true, but its been true for years despite efforts by organizations like the UN Foundation and UN Association to address the ignorance and publicize the UN's important contributions.  What we need is creative and new ideas for how to turn this around, not more ranting about why American perceptions of the UN aren't what they should be.

He's acknowledging that the Group of 77 developing countries have opposed vital reforms to, for example, give the SYG the authority to properly manage the UN, for example by being able to hire and fire and shift around posts to meet priorities.  I hope he doesn't attribute their recalcitrance wholly to resentment toward the U.S. . . . yup, he just did.  He argues they oppose reasonable proposals just because we back them.  But there's more to it.  Those obsolete posts are filled by country-nationals who often have their home missions in thrall.

He's calling for no more take-it-or-leave-it demands by the US.  Yet often take-it-or-leave-it is all that works.  It was Holbrooke's approach to getting an agreement on US dues to the UN paid.

Comments

[nadehzda]

Take-it-or-leave it may have worked six years ago, but right now it's terribly counterproductive. Just gives opponents to specific reforms a great excuse to dismiss what the US is pushing for without even having to respond on the merits. Unfortunately, UN reform is going to have to take a backseat to fence-mending for awhile after 2008.

[Lane Brody]

The goal for the U.S. should be to get the best replacement we can. The most pro U.S. candidate that might have a change to win is probably President Bill Clinton.

This aside the structure of the UN where some pathetic, poor, dictatorship has the same vote as India is just flawed. The premise that all nations are equal from Burma and Sudan to Germany and India is a fundamental problem in the UN.

There should be another organization where only democratic nations are allowed in; moreover, the UN Security Council run by the 5 victors of WWII is looking increasingly stale. Not having India, Japan, and Germany on it is silly. What is more silly is the reality that some on the Council will never give up their veto nor vote to extend it to anyone else. In this sense the UN is not onlly broken but incapable of being fixed. It needs to be replaced.

Lane

[James Bone]

U.S. Wants Top Aides at the U.N. to Resign When Annan Leaves

[Another bold and courageous move by Amb. Bolton. By this logic Jayantha Dhanapala should not become SG as he is also a Kofi corny. In fact Kofi recreated the Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) in 1998 to give Dhanapala the USG post as he had resigned from the Sri Lankan foreign service after a spat with the Foreign Minister and a Diplomat in Residence at the Monterrey Institute of International Studies].

[In keeping with the U.S tradition of its Ambassadors resigning when a new president is elected, in the same way all the heads of UN organizations should do the same (www.unsystem.org). How about disbanding UNMOVIC and ensure that in keeping with UN rules all those over 62 retire and are not allowed to work forever as consultants and advisors. Also ensure that the next SG is under 62. I hope to see Ambassador Bolton be at the UN till the end of the term of the Bush Administration and beyond. The UN is the world’s biggest taking shop, he has replaced it with action.]

In a move bound to ruffle feathers at Turtle Bay, the American ambassador, John Bolton, yesterday advocated mass resignations by the top appointees who run the United Nations bureaucracy, so a new secretary-general, who is scheduled to assume office at the beginning of next year, could pick his own team.

I strongly recommend that all appointees, ASGs and above, should resign their posts to give the new secretary-general a lot of flexibility," he said.

Such mass resignations could extend to top movers and shakers at the United Nations, where for the last 10 years Secretary-General Annan presided over some of the roughest periods in the history of the institution.

http://www.nysun.com/article/33969

Official of UN Says Americans Undermine It With Criticism

Richard A. Grenell, the spokesman for John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said Mr. Bolton had not had time to read the speech to react to it fully on Tuesday evening. "Mr. Malloch Brown did not extend to us the courtesy of a copy of the speech," Mr. Grenell said. "We need to read it and will certainly have to respond."

[Will any courageous politician, media or think tank call for a U.S-wide proposition in the midterm election to let Americans decide whether to continue to be a member of the UN and continue to be its biggest financier for anti-American activities?]

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/world/americas/07nations.html

[James Bone]

Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka who wishes to suceed buddy as UN Secretary-Genral is in a conflict of interest as his Son also works at the UN.

Dhanapala who was born in 1938 the same year as Kofi Annan will be 68 by the time Kofi leaves office. I think that there should be a rule that a UNSG should also retire at the age that is mandatory for all other UN staff members. Some say the UN is the profitable retirement home of ageing politicians and bureaucrats, mainly diplomats for third world countries. There are several Sri Lankans over the age of 70 still miniting money at the UN and in top positions.

These are Dhanapala’s failures so far:

1. He was unable to bring peace to Sri Lanka. If he cannot solve the separatist conflict problem of his country, how can he solve world problems as UNSG?

2. The NPT 2005 conference was flop because he managed to extend the NPT in 1995 to please the US. In Sri Lanka he is seen as a U.S. stooge;

3. He does not have a distinguished academic record at University and is not known to be a manager or reformer;

4. Also he is a good buddy of Kofi and they have known each other since 1957, when they were both on scholarships in the U.S

5. His health is also not so good.

Dhanapala’s Son works for the UNCHR and is currently in Myanmar/Burma and this is conflict of interest. Mr. Sivanka Dhanapala has been working at the UNHCR since 1995. He is current in Myanmar as Senior Repatriation Officer (Dhanapal@unhcr.ch, +95-1-524022/24/25 ext.111.

Now that Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka has been appointed the UNSG's Sepecial Representative on Children in Armed Conflict with the rank of UGS, it is time for Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala to withdraw his candidature]

Lankan official chosen Special Representative for Children

United Nations, Feb. 8 (PTI): The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed a seasoned Sri Lankan national, Radhika Coomaraswamy, as his Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200602081010.htm

http://www.slembassyusa.org/archives/main_index_pages/2006/pr_un_07feb06.html



All in the Family? U.N. Practices Under Scrutiny.

Mark Hosenball
879 words
27 June 2005
Newsweek
U.S. Edition
9
English
Copyright (C) 2005 Newsweek Inc. All Rights Reserved.


Scandals in the prewar Iraq Oil-for-Food Program are raising broader questions about how the United Nations does business. One concern: that relatives of top U.N. officials may have benefited from lax sensitivity to U.N. rules on conflicts of interest and nepotism. A blue-ribbon Oil-for-Food inquiry headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker spotlighted the issue of U.N. family ties. In a public report in March, Volcker's panel examined dealings between Kojo Annan, son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Cotecna, a Swiss company hired by the United Nations to enforce Oil-for-Food Program rules.

Kojo, who also held summer jobs at the United Nations' Geneva office in 1992, '93 and '95, is not the only U.N. relative who has been involved in U.N. activities. In public briefings, U.N. spokesmen said one of Kofi Annan's close associates, Canadian businessman and U.N. adviser Maurice Strong, until recently employed a relative, Kristina Mayo, as a staff assistant. In April, Strong, who once held a U.N. under-secretary post and served as Kofi Annan's special envoy to the Korean Peninsula, took a leave from his U.N. activities after his name surfaced in a Justice Department Oil-for-Food inquiry (he has denied any wrongdoing). Later it was found that Mayo, who had worked as an aide in Strong's U.N. office since 2003, was Strong's stepdaughter. The United Nations acknowledged that Mayo resigned after U.N. officials discovered that in response to a question on her job application about whether she was related to other U.N. officials, she had answered "no." Neither Strong nor Mayo responded to requests for comment.

Another U.N. official with family ties within the institution is Imran Riza, now a senior political adviser to Kofi Annan's personal representative to southern Lebanon. Until earlier this year, Imran's father, S. Iqbal Riza, was Kofi Annan's long-serving chief of staff, making him one of the United Nations' most powerful bureaucrats. (The elder Riza retired after Volcker's inquiry rebuked him for shredding official files that might have been relevant to the investigation; on Riza's behalf, U.N. spokesmen denied any impropriety.) Three years ago, UNforum, a Web site run by dissident U.N. employees, complained that Riza Senior had "arranged" for the junior Riza's promotion to his current post. In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, Imran Riza denied that his father had played any role in his employment by or advancement in the United Nations and said that at the time he first joined the U.N. refugee office in Sudan in 1987, "there were no rules that prohibited a relative of someone in the Secretariat to be recruited to [a U.N.] agency." Imran noted that if his father had helped him get his job, "I don't think that I would have been sent to a duty station which at that time was considered one of the most dangerous ones in the system." U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric says it's clear from Imran Riza's record that he had been a "very dedicated employee."

The most public face of the conflict-of-interest controversy has been Kojo Annan, who was employed by Cotecna in Nigeria from 1995 to 1997 and stayed on as a part-time paid consultant to the firm before the United Nations hired it. Volcker's report alleged that after Kojo's consultancy with Cotecna became public in 1999, Kojo and Cotecna worked together to "conceal the true nature" of the company's "continuing relationship" with him. Kofi Annan denied knowing about his son's consulting deal with Cotecna before 1999, and Volcker concluded that Kojo "intentionally deceived" his dad about the relationship. A London-based lawyer for Kojo noted that Volcker found "no improper influence over the awarding of the Cotecna contract." In a letter to Volcker, Kofi's lawyer, Gregory Craig, said he was "gratified" that Volcker had found "no impropriety" regarding how Annan had handled either his personal affairs or U.N. business. But the controversy continued to simmer last week with the leak of an e-mail written by Michael Wilson, a Kojo pal who also worked for Cotecna. In the e-mail, Wilson appears to report that a Cotecna delegation discussed the Iraq oil program with "the SG [secretary-general] and his entourage" in November 1998. A U.N. spokesman said Kofi Annan and his aides had no recollection of such a discussion; the same London law firm that represents Kojo issued a statement on Wilson's behalf also denying that the meeting mentioned in Wilson's e-mail--or any similar meeting with Kofi Annan--ever took place.

U.N. spokesman Dujarric told NEWSWEEK that U.N. officials try to "live by the rules," which "are very clear in that one cannot hire a father, mother, son, daughter, brother or sister except where no more qualified candidate is available... The organization has to be extremely vigilant." Odd job: Oil-for-Food probes spotlight concerns about enforcement of U.N. ethics rules | Family affair: Kofi (top), Kojo


Jayantha Dhanapala
SRI LANKA

Mr. Dhanapala has published three books and several articles in international journals and lectured in many countries. He was born on 30 December 1938, is married and has one daughter and one son.

http://www.unu.edu/council/members/Dhanapala.html

[aanon]

UN structure is an oligarchy of WWII imperialists. The US of course uses the UN when convenient, example Iraq and not Israel. So its just a tool for the US to create "agreement" and "coalitions of the willing" to browbeat other countries. AKA neo-colonialism.

Right now US is blackmailing the UN to do its bidding or cut-off funding.. Right there is a conflict of interest.

I say just disband the organization and create a single-level organization of all countries with equal votes and no budget. Individual countries can then form "coalitions of the willing" to further their interests.

[J Thomas]

I find I agree with Lane Brody. The UN is broken and cannot be fixed.

So here's the plan. US withdraws from UN. US starts a competing organization composed of all the nations we can bribe to withdraw from UN and join our new thing. Maybe we can call the new organization Association of States United, ASU. Would the british withdraw from the UN for us? Probably not.

So we lose our Security Council veto, and the UN does whatever it does without us.

If it turns out that we do need the UN after all, we can petition to rejoin it -- this time without a Security Council seat and a more modest membership fee, a plus for everybody. And if the organization we control gets powerful enough, the UN will evaporate.

What's to lose by trying? It might work and if it doesn't all we lose is a veto.

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