Top U.N. Renovation Official Resigns

By Nick Wadhams
May 4, 2006
The Washington Post
Original Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401729.html

UNITED NATIONS -- The official in charge of the U.N. headquarters renovation announced his resignation Thursday, saying he was frustrated by bureaucratic and political wrangling that have resulted in years of delay and massive cost overruns.
Louis Frederick Reuter IV will depart at the end of June, less than a year after he was hired to get the U.N. Capital Master Plan back on track. The U.N. headquarters is out of date but member states that must approve plans can't agree on a way forward.
Much of Reuter's job involved trying to cut through U.N. bureaucracy and persuade member states to move ahead, to little avail. In a statement, he said that wasn't the work he wanted to do.
I am 62 years old and am interested in building buildings, not 'selling' them, which activity has constituted the majority of my work over the last year, Reuter said in a statement announcing his resignation.
The resignation is a major setback for the project to renovate the U.N.'s glass-and-steel headquarters building on New York's East Side. The 39-story tower has not seen a major overhaul in its 60-year existence and now violates safety and fire codes.
The Capital Master Plan has been repeatedly waylaid in the main U.N. budget committee and elsewhere, largely for political reasons. The project is now awaiting approval in the U.N. General Assembly.
Reuter, an American, had spoken frequently with U.S. congressional leaders who must approve much of the funding for the $1.6 billion renovation. His departure could make them even more skeptical of a project they are already wary about.
The project was the source of a political battle between Cuba and the United States over a U.S. loan offer. Several developing nations have sought to require that builders from their countries be used in the project. Elected officials in Congress and the New York State Legislature have been loath to provide needed approval or funding because of the oil-for-food scandal and other U.N. problems.
Donald Trump even went before a U.S. Senate committee last year to complain that the U.N. was bungling the project. He said in an interview Thursday that the project should cost about $700 million, a figure that Reuter and several other U.N. officials have rejected as far too low.
The U.N. used to solve wars and other problems and now all they deal with is oil-for-food and expensive things like this, Trump said.