An Accountable U.N. At Long Last?
31/08/2011 
Investors.Com
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=583459&p=1 http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=583459&p=1


Politics: The United Nations has long been a font of waste, corruption, fraud and anti-Americanism. Always in need of reform, it's never happened. But a House bill may change that, and it can't pass soon enough.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced a 153-page bill Tuesday to gradually defund the U.N. until it lives up to its goals and accounts for its actions.
Seems the fat checks coming in from U.S. taxpayers have given the U.N. the idea it can be as anti-American as its dollars allow, especially with the leading from behind crowd in the White House going along. Ros-Lehtinen's proposal has teeth and deserves to be passed.
H.R. 2829 will make U.S. funding voluntary rather than based on what the U.N. itself assesses. Passage means the U.N. won't be able to spit in the face of its largest donor without consequences. That's fair to taxpayers, of course, and U.N. bureaucrats will scream.
It's about time they did. The U.N.'s latest stunt is to make Palestine a state and voting member without requiring it to admit Israel's right to exist. That proposal, coming up in the fall, stands to upset the balance of power in the Middle East, bankroll terror, put U.N. muscle behind a new rogue state and isolate Israel.
Ros-Lehtinen's United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act of 2011 will yank funds from any U.N. institution that upgrades the status of the PLO/Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to member and scupper this atrocious rogue-state scheme.
It will also remove the gravy bowl from the Palestinian Authority, which has raked in $500 million in U.S. cash from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which supposedly aids Palestinian refugees, but keeps getting caught bankrolling terrorism.
The prohibition on funding would remain in place until UNRWA vets its staff and aid recipients through U.S. watch lists for ties to Foreign Terrorist Organizations; stops engaging in anti-Israel propaganda and politicized activities; improves its accountability and transparency; and stops banking with any financial institutions under U.S. designations for terror financing or money-laundering.
Amazingly, that sort of activity has been going on at the U.N. for years, courtesy of U.S. tax dollars. This, by the way, helps explain why Palestinians have never shown any urgency about making peace with Israel.
Those are the trigger issues, but the entire structure of the U.N. needs attention and the bill gives it, including:
• The Goldstone Report. A false document accusing Israel of war crimes so bad its namesake, Judge Richard Goldstone, repudiated it in April. That hasn't stopped the U.N. from pushing a series of follow-on measures in the General Assembly. Ros-Lehtinen's bill would require the U.S. to repudiate this garbage.
• The U.N. Human Rights Council. This replaced an earlier U.N. rights body in an attempt to keep the likes of Libya, Iran, Cuba and Saudi Arabia from sitting in judgment on the West. It's failed and the same creep show is back. Ros-Lehtinen's bill would prohibit the U.S. from taking part in this joke, and yank funds from it until the State Department certifies it's no longer a nest of rogue states that beat up dissidents.
• The Durban Process. The U.N.'s racism and bigotry conference is nothing but an anti-U.S., anti-Israel, anti-freedom bacchanal for tyrants. Ros-Lehtinen's bill will not only yank funds, but also ensure the U.S. leads a campaign to encourage all countries to withdraw.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency. It has been enabling Iran and Pakistan by looking the other way on illegal nuclear programs. Its funds will be yanked until it gets serious about its mission.
History has shown that pulling funding is the only way to get the U.N.'s attention. The Ros-Lehtinen bill is measured in its approach and enables the U.N. to clean up its act.
If the Obama administration won't support its aims, it behooves everyone in Congress and in his presidential opposition to get behind it.