Congress Turns Up Heat on U.N. Headquarters
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 29, 2005

Amid snowballing reports of U.N. corruption, the world body's plans to renovate and expand its headquarters in Turtle Bay are beginning to draw attention from Washington, where members of the House Committee on International Relations have announced their intention to expose the project to greater scrutiny and to consider using it as leverage to extract institutional reforms from the United Nations.
Leading the charge is a Republican congresswoman from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is a senior member of the committee and a longtime critic of the United Nations. In a press release last week, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said: Given the wholesale lack of institutional transparency and accountability at the United Nations, it is imperative that we closely examine the $1.2 billion that the U.N. will be utilizing for the rehabilitation and refurbishment of the current U.N. headquarters building, in addition to the construction of a 35-story, 900,000-square-foot annex.
The congresswoman referred to a $1.2 billion low-interest loan, approved by Congress and President Bush last fall, for the purpose of renovating the Secretariat Building and other U.N. headquarters facilities. The 35-story annex, to be built over a city park adjacent to the United Nations' Turtle Bay compound, is to be financed by $650 million in bonds issued by the United Nations Development Corporation, a New York city-state entity. Since U.N. officials have said the world body will repay in full both the $1.2 billion and $650 million sums, American taxpayers - who shoulder 22% of the U.N. operating budget - can expect to pay more than $400 million for the project.
Questioning the priorities of the world body, and the demands it places on American taxpayers, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen concluded: When there is such a need for additional resources to provide technical assistance for political development and civil society, health, and education, should the contributions of countries be diverted to making the U.N. bureaucrats in New York more comfortable? Certainly not! The U.S. taxpayer must not continue to be bled white by an unaccountable U.N. bureaucracy.
Corresponding by e-mail, the congresswoman explained that Secretary-General Annan's recent requests for additional funds and resources had prompted her to review U.N. budgeting, including the expansion project.
In addition to demanding greater investigation into the construction project, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen described its usefulness as a means of demanding institutional reforms from the United Nations.
Past U.S. efforts to reform the U.N. have made frequent use of America's financial leverage as the organization's largest contributor, she said. The reason for this is that the United States has few options to force reform on an unwilling organization. However, this is a matter of undertaking the necessary institutional measures to ensure that U.S. taxpayer funds are spent by the United Nations in a transparent manner.
How to extract accountability from the United Nations by using the expansion project and America's U.N. dues will be addressed by the International Relations Committee in coming months as it takes up biennial legislation, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, that determines and approves American contributions to international organizations.
Folded into the Foreign Relations Authorization Act will be the committee's U.N. reform proposals, which may include demands for whistleblower protection, international standards of accounting, reform of various U.N. commissions, more discipline in budgeting, increased financial disclosure, peacekeeping reform, and merit hiring, a House Republican aide said yesterday.
Members of the committee said the legislation could reduce American funds for the United Nations if the world body failed to comply with its demands.
American support for the U.N. expansion project could also be included in the bargaining, the aide, who asked not to be named, said. The aide added that the committee's chairman, Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois, is definitely aware of the concerns regarding the world body's renovations.
A New York Republican on the committee, Peter King of Long Island, said he agreed with Ms. Ros-Lehtinen about the need for greater scrutiny of the renovation project.
Before we give them a penny, this has to go under the microscope, Mr. King said.
So much has come out involving the U.N., the congressman said, referring to recent scandals, that if we keep giving them money like this, we end up becoming enablers.
Mr. King said he expected the committee to fully investigate the finances of the renovation project and anticipated congressional hearings examining the proposed construction.
Another New York congressman who serves on the committee, Eliot Engel, a Democrat of the Bronx, disputed the connection between the renovation and past U.N. corruption, however. Mr. Engel said that while he is absolutely disgusted by the oil-for-food scandal, the anti-Americanism that spews forth from the U.N., and the world body's anti-Semitic, anti-Israel nonsense, he believes they must be viewed as things apart from the construction project.
I think New York City has benefited by having the U.N. in our city. I think it creates jobs ... and in terms of having people work in New York and live in New York, it helps the economy, Mr. Engel said.
Yet he did suggest that the International Relations Committee ask for assurances of greater transparency in U.N. construction projects. Mr. Engel said safeguards should accompany the release of American funds for the U.N. expansion.
He said he would not be opposed to committee hearings into the project, but cautioned against erecting insurmountable obstacles to the renovation taking place.
A member of New York City's congressional delegation who is running for mayor, Anthony Weiner, seemed to align more with Mr. King and Ms. Ros-Lehtinen in his views of the U.N. project.
I believe we should be using the U.N. expansion as a hook for all kinds of U.N. reforms, Mr. Weiner, a Democrat whose district straddles the Brooklyn-Queens border, said. The reforms he sought range from demanding improvements in U.N. financial management to improving their accountability on even basic things like parking tickets. The mayoral candidate called the proposed expansion a rare bite at the apple for New York residents looking to discuss the United Nations' institutional values and its worth to the city.
In particular, Mr. Weiner said, he questioned whether their continuing screed against Israel is something that they should be allowed to continue without any accountability when they're in a city with such a large Jewish population.
Mr. Weiner said he supported his congressional colleagues in their efforts to use the U.N. expansion as leverage to demand reform from the organization. Even the U.N. supporters I've spoken to in Congress have lamented the lack of accountability and the lack of true reform at the U.N., he said. The U.N. expansion gives us a chance to turn those laments into real changes.
Mr. Weiner faulted Mayor Bloomberg, in particular, for his unwillingness to take up some of these issues at the local level, calling the silence a real blind spot on his part.
A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Ed Skyler, responded by reaffirming the administration's commitment to the project, adding that the city's Economic Development Corporation and Parks Department are continuing to meet with community organizations to address acceptable mitigation for the parkland that would be lost as part of the project.
Mr. Skyler also touted the value of the United Nations to the city, repeating administration assertions that it supports thousands of jobs and contributes more than $2.5 billion a year to the local economy.
The U.N. is visited by 800,000 people annually and makes a major contribution to New York's reputation as an international city, Mr. Skyler said.
The United Nations, too, highlighted the organization's value to New York, while maintaining that the renovation project is necessary to ensure the safety of staff working there.
A U.N. spokesman, Farhan Haq, said in a statement to The New York Sun that the proposal is an essential upgrading of a building that hasn't been refurbished in a half century.
We hope the people of New York will see the construction activity to be in all of our best interests, the statement said.