U.N. Exposed

By Jamie Glazov
June 6, 2006
FrontPageMagazine.Com
Original Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22786

Frontpage Interview’s guest is Eric Shawn, a Senior Correspondent for the Fox News Channel. He is the author of the new book, U.N. Exposed: How the United Nations Sabotages America's Security and Fails the World. 
FP: Eric Shawn, welcome to Frontpage Interview. 

Shawn: Thank you. 


FP: So what inspired you to write this book?


Shawn: I'm a veteran City Hall and crime reporter in New York and have been reporting on the United Nations on and off since 1982.  During the run up to the war in 2002, I was posted there by Fox News and began to learn how the once vaunted organization has been crippled by corruption, ineptitude, inefficiency and worse, indifference. It should stand as a beacon of hope and humanity but its mission has been perverted by compromise, appeasement and graft. I wanted to open the closed doors of the U.N. meetings and show my fellow Americans what really goes on inside what I call U.N.    World. I wanted to let Americans learn the real record of inability, and use that as a challenge to try and reform the place.   


FP: What is it that has incapacitated the U.N. in terms of dealing with the grave threats we face today?


Shawn: Conflicting agendas.  The U.N. permits terrorism-supporting states to sit in on anti-terrorist meetings. The General Assembly still cannot even define terrorism, let alone chart an effective response against it. The dictatorships and tyrannies that oppose American ideals have the run of the place. This hamstrings effective action. One only need to consider the Security Council's inability to deal with the Iranian crisis as proof that the well meaning efforts have been defeated.

   

FP: How have the Security Council and U.N. anti-terrorism committees jeopardized America's security? There is, after all, ineffectiveness in dealing with Iran, terrorism, and Iraq.


Shawn: The Security Council has been gutted by its own members, specifically Russia, China, and France.

Our efforts are compromised by the economic agendas of others. One only need to see how Russia and China are now serving as Iran's protectors in the Security Council, largely, I believe, to protect the energy trade between those nations. China has signed a $100 billion oil and natural gas deal, Russia earns billions in nuclear technology and weapons sales.


The Security Council does not even back up what it says. In April, a Presidential Statement demanded that Iran stop uranium enrichment. Russia and China opposed even returning to the Council to back that up legally. They oppose the possibility of sanctions. In other words, the worst in the world have learned that the Security Council can be bought off, its demands ignored, with few meaningful, if any, consequences. 


As for the anti-terrorism committees, one need only to examine the diplomats' own reports, as I did in the book. They admit the organization's anti-terrorism efforts are failing, that the U.N. only pays lip service to the issue, and why not?


Syria sits in on anti-terrorist committee meetings. Iran is elected as Vice-Chairman of the U.N. Disarmament Committee.


Only half of the nations on the Al Qaeda Committee even bother to hand in their reports on time and when the Committee chairman offered in-depth meetings on how to root out Al Qaeda from individual nations, NO ONE showed up! The Vice Chairman of the U.N.'s Counter Terrorism Committee refuses to condemn terrorism. We face the possibility of a nuclear Iran because the U.N. gave them a 21 year head start. The so called nuclear watchdog, the I.A.E.A. didn't even know Iran had a nuclear program for 18 years. Then it took another three years to reach the Security Council because China, Russia, and other nations blocked any action.  They served as Iran's linebackers on the governing board of the agency, refusing to allow Iran's infractions to be reported until earlier this year. Russia and China -whose economic interests clearly lie in protecting Iran -have already castrated the Security Council by declaring opposition to sanctions, creating the impossibility of full Council backed action.  

The most notable development regarding nuclear proliferation in recent times was not even a U.N. achievement. As I write in the book, It was not the U.N.'s efforts that exposed the extensive global black market in nuclear technology peddled by Pakistan's Dr. A.Q. Khan. No U.N. committee ordered Muammar Qaddafi to surrender his weapons of mass destruction programs.  Those successes are among the achievements of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), the brainchild of John Bolton under the Bush administration. Compare PSI's actual achievements with the U.N.'s failures on the nuclear weapons front. Iran only needs to look at the Security Council's crippling by Saddam to understand why President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls its resolutions meaningless.


FP: Does the U.N. bear responsibility for the Iraq war? 


Shawn: Yes. For everyone that chants Bush lied, people died, I have another slogan. U.N. bribed, People died. My book reveals how Saddam violated 17 Security Council resolutions and the creation of the Oil for Food program only served to embolden him.  If the Council had actually backed up its word with meaningful action, perhaps Saddam would have actually abided by the mandates early on, and there would have been clarity, not confusion, regarding the state of his weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. could only go along with the four other permanent members of the Council, and the book details how France, Russia and China continually opposed our and the British efforts to clean up the program or stem the suspected corruption. Saddam was strengthened by the United Nations and the Security Council failures. Resolution 687, passed in 1991, prohibited conventional arms and all military equipment from being sold to Saddam. Then how did he buy $1 billion worth of weapons, from anti-tank missiles to bullets? 
 
The C.I.A. Iraq Group detailed how French and Russian representatives were allegedly meeting with the Iraqis just three weeks before the war to sell Saddam's regime spare parts and other weapons. But that was a practice that went on throughout the 1990's. Saddam's officials had a name for it, they called Saddam's efforts to spread billions around the globe in oil and trade contracts Saddam's Bribery System. It worked, because France, Russia and China routinely opposed us in the 661 Committee, the group that ran the program. In the book I say the Iraq war also ran from 1991 to 2003 inside Conference Room #7, in the basement of U.N. headquarters, where he was able to defeat the United States and Britain in their efforts against his regime.


FP: Tell us how U.N.-supervised funds were diverted into weapons used against American troops. 


Shawn: The Security Council had its hand on Saddam's the Oil revenue. Instead of watching the money, the Council permitted billions in kickbacks and payoffs to be spun off of the program which Saddam then used to buy nearly whatever he wanted, such as the billion dollars worth of weapons. This money funded his military and is now being used, according to the U.S. government, to fund the terrorists fighting our troops. Several days into the war an A10 Warthog was shot down by what the Pentagon said was a French Roland Missile. Although its manufacturer denies it sold weapons to Saddam's regime, how did that get into the Iraqi's hands? It is a prime example of how Saddam's weapons buying spree went on despite a Security Council resolution against it. 

As I write in the book, It is a matter of record that the American diplomats warned France and Russia, along with other members of the Security Council '661 Committee,' that Saddam Hussein was soaking up kickbacks, only to have the warnings dismissed. It is not inconceivable that, if the Security Council had done its duty and turned off the Iraqi spigot, some portion of the financial aid to Palestinian terrorists could have dried up. But instead, 18 months after the council members were alerted by the United States about the illegal diversion of U.N. dollars, the families of...two suicide bombers were rewarded with Iraqi oil money for their carnage.  The House International Relations Committee documented how $35 million was spun off of the Security Council supervised oil funds to pay families of suicide bombers. It is shameful that we are now facing the results of Security Council inaction.


FP: Can you illuminate for us the lavish lifestyle of U.N. diplomats that is so at odds with their mission?


Shawn: The U.N. is a non-profit, humanitarian organization that provides one of the most elegant and expensive mansions for its C.E.O. I don't want to see the Secretary General out on the street, but why does the U.N. provide a mansion that I valued at $19 million? It actually is worth much more than that. A smaller mansion a few doors down from Kofi's just went on the market for $42 million. It seems what is likely a $50 million house is so at odds with the organization's purpose. But why not, in U.N. World even nations on life-support go first class. Yemen, listed as the 14th poorest country on earth, snapped up a $6.8 million Manhattan townhouse for its Ambassador. The diplomats still owe New York City $19 million in unpaid parking tickets. And how about those little plastic cards that let them avoid even paying the 60 cents sales tax on the $4.85 cheeseburger deluxe at the Friar's coffee shop on East 45th street? I have seen that with my own eyes. Until recently the gift limit was set at $10,000. You can't give a U.S. Congressman something worth more than 50 bucks. The self-satisfied, insular world of the diplomats seems to conflict with their duties. When caviar canapés bring world peace, I'll believe it. 

 

FP: Can the U.N. reform?


Shawn: I hope so, but the odds are not good. The Bush administration and the Secretary General have proposed a massive reform agenda, but sadly it was shot down by the majority of U.N. members.  Reform is only possible if the member states return to the principles of the U.N.'s founding, and that, as of now, seems unlikely. Economic self-interest must stop trumping the upholding of those founding guidelines. The diplomats voting on reform are also vested in maintaining a flawed system that has provided them with a life-style that is, to say the least, privileged and self-indulgent. The highly praised reform plan has for now been largely torpedoed by the restive G-77 member states, the actual 132 General Assembly members that set back hopes for reform with their votes against that effort last month. The U.N. needs to establish standards of responsibility and accountability, from within and without. Unless reform is taken seriously, I am afraid that the organization will drift into irrelevancy beyond what we have already experienced. 


FP: Eric Shawn, thank you joining us.


Shawn: Thank you, and for your work at Frontpage on the U.N. issue.