U.N. Secretary-General Makes a Trip to Washington
By Benny Avni
June 20, 2007
The New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/56960
UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Ban plans a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet congressional leaders today, just as the capital — despite a general sympathy for the secretary-general — is awash in criticism of U.N. bodies.
Among them:
• The House of Representatives is considering a motion to defund the U.N. Human Rights Council, which in Geneva yesterday capped its first year of existence by resolving to weaken its oversight of top human rights violators around the world while intensifying its scrutiny of Israel.
• A report by an investigative arm of Congress earlier this week slammed agencies across the U.N. system for weak oversight mechanisms and other management failures.
• A House resolution, expected to pass today by a large margin, questions the ability of the United Nation's crown jewel, the Security Council, to act on crucial world matters.
• State Department officials have publicly locked horns with top bureaucrats of the U.N. Development Program over UNDP actions in North Korea.
Despite all this, relations between the Bush administration and Mr. Ban have warmed considerably, especially when compared with the tense standoff that adhered during the second term of Mr. Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan.
He is on the phone with Condi almost daily, an aide to Mr. Ban, speaking on condition of anonymity and referring to Secretary of State Rice, said yesterday.
Often criticized at the United Nations for being too close to America, Mr. Ban interlocutors today will include Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat of California, and Senators Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont; Coleman, a Republican of Minnesota, and Voinovich, a Republican of Ohio.
After his recent announcement of a tentative agreement with Sudan to allow a 20,000-troop force in to protect civilians in Darfur — as has long been urged by Washington — Mr. Ban plans to ask the legislators to remove a restriction on American funding for the U.N. peacekeeping department. Currently, Congress allows funding of no more than 25% of the department's annual budget.
Meanwhile, in Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Council decided on new rules that include elimination of rights monitoring in Cuba and Belarus, while making scrutiny of Israel a permanent institution. In response, the ranking Republican in the House Foreign Relations Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, introduced legislation that would ban State Department funding for the council. Although not a voting member, Washington contributes $3 million to the council's annual budget.
The outgoing rights council president, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, had been forced to ask a mariachi band to hold off a planned celebration of the end of his year-long tenure Monday because China was blocking the proposed package of new guidelines for the council's operations. Even after compromise was reached, Canada argued yesterday against the singling out of Israel. In the vote, however, it remained alone in opposition.
To its shame, the U.N. Human Rights Council celebrated its first birthday by giving gifts to Fidel Castro, the authoritarian regime in Belarus, and the enemies of the democratic state of Israel, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said yesterday, adding that Washington must refuse to pay for this poisonous charade.
A separate House resolution, expected to pass by a large margin today, calls on the U.N. Security Council to charge Iran's President Ahmadinejad with violating the U.N. charter by calling for the elimination of Israel. A milder statement on the subject was introduced by America at the Security Council two weeks ago, but was blocked by Indonesia, which in closed-door discussions said it feared internal unrest if it appeared to support the statement. Failing to achieve the necessary consensus, the council is currently deadlocked over the statement.
Why would Indonesia not support the rules of the United Nations? Rep. Steve Rothman, a Democrat of New Jersey, told Washington legislators Monday as he introduced the House resolution. Whatever the reason, my friends, it's wrong.
In another action critical of the United Nations, a report issued by the Congressional investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, earlier this week found, as Mr. Coleman described it, widespread failures in crucial areas like auditing, investigations, and disclosure still plague the U.N. system. If it fails to improve such management tools, he said, America no longer can be used as a blank check for funding the U.N. system.
Among the agencies criticized in the GAO report was the UNDP. On Friday, the agency issued a press release refuting details of a story in that day's New York Sun. According to the release, an associate administrator of the UNDP, Ad Melkert, never threatened an American ambassador, Mark Wallace, with retaliation over his scrutiny of the agency's North Korea program.
The assertion directly contradicted America's Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, who had complained about the threat made by Mr. Melkert in a letter to UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis.