Move Afoot To Fire U.N. Staffer Who Worked for Kerry
BY BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 23, 2005

UNITED NATIONS - Staffers at the United Nations Development Program have demanded that the agency's outgoing administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, fire an employee who they say has violated rules designed to assure the world body's neutrality by working for the Democratic presidential campaign.
The letter, signed by 12 UNDP Staffers demands the immediate dismissal of Justin Leites, who heads the UNDP internal communications department. The unnamed staffers call on Mr. Malloch Brown to dismiss Mr. Leites before you relinquish office as UNDP administrator. A Turkish national, Kemal Dervis, has been named to replace Mr. Malloch Brown at UNDP, starting August 15, as Mr. Malloch Brown dedicates himself fully to serving as U.N. chief of staff.
The letter, seen by The New York Sun, comes at a sensitive time for Mr. Malloch Brown, who in January 2005 was appointed U.N. chief of staff. In his new capacity, he has stressed the need to amend the organization's bruised relations with America - and specifically with Republicans who rule at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Last week, the Sun reported that Mr. Malloch Brown has lived for the last two years at a Westchester County house owned by his personal friend, financier George Soros, paying a monthly rent of $10,000. Mr. Soros's Open Society Institute is involved in several joint projects with UNDP. His activities around the world have bought him many political allies, as well as enemies, mostly in the former Soviet bloc. Since last year's presidential campaign, Mr. Soros has also immersed himself in American politics, vowing to unseat the Bush administration.
According to the UNDP employees who wrote the letter - saying their anonymity should be protected as whistle blowers - the agency has earned the dubious reputation as a Democratic political outpost. Violating U.N. rules designed to ensure political neutrality endangers all U.N. workers, they claim. Continuing complicity and inaction on your part will maintain a precedent encouraging more staff members to interfere in a partisan manner at all levels of politics in member states.
Mr. Leites's stint with the Kerry-Edwards campaign in his home state of Maine last year violated staff rules, the authors say. Taking leave to work for an American political campaign has projected UNDP into the center of the sort of acrimonious Democratic-Republican debate that characterized the bitterly fought 2004 presidential election, the letter read.
There is an ongoing inquiry internally into this allegation, and it has not yet concluded, a UNDP spokesman, William Orme, told the Sun yesterday, adding that he could not answer more specific questions while the inquiry continues.
The investigation by the UNDP Office of Audit and Performance Review was launched in early May, as reported in the Sun, after the 12 staffers filed an official complaint on Mr. Leites's campaigning. Mr. Leites has not denied working for two months last fall as a political director in Maine for the Democratic presidential ticket, using vacation time. U.N. regulation requires following staff rules even while on leave.
According to the letter, Mr. Malloch Brown himself might have violated the principal of political neutrality when he worked for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees during the 1980s. In a January interview with the Guardian of London, Mr. Malloch Brown said that, in 1983, he gave the head of the U.N. agency an unsigned letter of resignation, as he took leave, attempting to run for a parliamentary seat in his native Britain. After souring on his political campaign, he returned to UNHCR.