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| International-UN-NGOs |
| U.S. airs U.N. dirty laundry |
| 2008-02-18 |
| The Bush administration has been posting hundreds of highly confidential U.N. audits and investigation reports on a U.S. government Web site, opening the United Nations’ inner workings and some of its more colorful scandals to unusual public scrutiny. Together, the nearly 500 documents and thousands of pages constitute a trove of U.N. secrets stretching over five years, including allegations of bribes paid for tsunami relief projects in Indonesia, of sexual harassment in Gaza and a revelation that a U.N. anti-drug official ran a presidential campaign while receiving a U.N. paycheck. The pages also document a spree of alleged criminal activities, including a bribery scheme at the airport in Pristina, Kosovo; gold trading by U.N. peacekeepers in Congo; and the theft and resale of food rations by Ukrainian pilots serving the United Nations in Liberia. Mark Wallace, the U.S. representative for U.N. management and reform, has posted 477 documents, following the lead of his former boss, John Bolton, who as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations began releasing documents as early as 2006. “I didn’t see any reason why U.N. audit documents shouldn’t be made public,” recalled Bolton, comparing the situation to the Government Accountability Office’s publication of reports on U.S. government activities. “I didn’t think my job was to cover up for the United Nations.” The documents’ disclosure has shed light on some major U.N. mysteries, including the abrupt retirement of Jacques Paul Klein, a former American diplomat who served as the U.N. special representative in Liberia until April 2005. A two-page document labeled “strictly confidential” accuses Klein of an improper relationship with a local woman suspected of passing on secrets to Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president now on trial for war crimes. Klein was one of the most visible U.S. nationals at the United Nations, where he served as special representative in Eastern Slavonia in 1996, and later as the U.N.’s high representative in Bosnia. In 2003, Klein was chosen to lead the U.N. mission in Liberia, the organization’s largest peacekeeping operation at the time, where he oversaw the transition from Charles Taylor’s rule to the election of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank economist. Klein developed a reputation for bullying Bosnian or Liberian power brokers into yielding to U.N. demands, and he presided over missions in Bosnia and Liberia that faced sexual misconduct scandals involving U.N. personnel. Klein met Linda Fawaz, a 30-year-old Liberian-American woman whose uncle headed a major timber company. According to the report, Fawaz (identified as “Local Woman”) accompanied Klein (described as “Senior Official”) to diplomatic functions and regularly traveled on U.N. aircraft in violation of organizational rules. “Senior Official has invited Local Woman to functions both with UNMIL staff and persons outside the UN, some of which have been of an official nature,” the report said. “A number of staff interviewed by (U.N. investigators) expressed concern that the Local Woman was passing information which she had gathered from Senior Official to Mr. Taylor” and others. Efforts to reach Fawaz through a former employer were unsuccessful. Klein declined to discuss the investigation, saying, “I think I’ve put my family … through enough misery.” But he defended his tenure in Liberia, saying that he had helped to bring a crippled nation “back to its feet” and paved the way for democratic elections. “I’m just trying to put all this behind me and get on with my life,” Klein said. Among the documents posted on the Web are 32 reports, completed in 2004 and 2005, by a U.N. investigative task force into misconduct at the internationally operated airport in Pristina, including bribery, bid rigging and sexual harassment. The reports document allegations that airport staff members received payment to forge documents from Kosovars seeking entry into European capitals and demanded kickbacks from companies seeking contracts. |
| Posted by:ryuge |