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Russia's Lavrov Criticizes UNDP for
"Privatized" Payments to Saakashvili for Soros
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
September 29 -- Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the UN Development Program on Monday
for
having funded, including with money from George Soros' Open Society
Institute,
the salary of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili and his top aides.
Inner
City Press which first broke the story, in 2006 then August
2008 complete with UNDP confirmation, asked
Lavrov if he felt in light of this funding that the UN in this case
lost
impartiality. "We must establish clear rules," Lavrov said, "for
controlling spending by international organizations. We cannot allow
such
organizations to become privatized." Video here,
from Minute 26:33.
Later on Monday, Inner
City Press asked Ban
Ki-moon's Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe
Inner City Press: Lavrov, in a
press conference, among other things, said of a program, in which the
United Nations
Development Program funneled salary to President Mikheil Saakashvili of
Georgia
on behalf of the Open Society Institute -- that it was a wrong United
Nations
program, and the UN should not be privatized in this fashion. Either now or before the end of the day, is
there some response by the UN to this critique by Russia’s Foreign
Minister, of
how the UN system is being privatized?
Deputy Spokesperson Okabe: We’ll
look into it for you. If it's a UNDP
program, we'll check with
UNDP.
Question: I have a follow-up
question to that --
whether there was anything incorrect or hidden at UNDP at the time,
renting
premises allegedly from the head of the Open Society Institute...
Deputy Spokesperson: Let’s ask
UNDP if they have any follow-up on
that.
[The Deputy Spokesperson later
added that, in 2004, UNDP launched a “Governance Reform Programme” in
Georgia. This was done as a two-pronged
approach to enable the Government to recruit the staff it needed and
also to
help remove incentives for corruption.
UNDP created a salary supplement fund, funded
initially by $1 million
from the Open Society Institute and $500,000 from UNDP, and later
supplemented
by another $1 million from the Swedish International Development
Cooperation
Agency. This fund was designed to
provide leading public servants with a wage that, though modest by
international standards, was sufficient for Georgia.
At the same time, the Government was required
to make a credible commitment to increase tax revenues in order to
cover this
rise in expenditure. The Government was
so successful in improving tax collection that the salary supplement
programme
for top officials was fully taken over by the State budget after just a
single
year (rather than the planned three).]
But this
response, later added to the UN's
transcript, was the same old one UNDP
provided a month ago, and did not address either Lavrov's critique,
nor the
question about conflict of interest, even after Inner City
Press' story was widely picked up in the Russian media, click here
for that.
Russia's Lavrov, UNDP explanation of
Saakashvili funding not shown
Inner City
Press interviewed a range of diplomats later on Monday, including many
who support Georgia over Russia but who without exception
called the UNDP program a mistake and abuse of UN powers and mandate.
Some said
it would be one thing to help pay salaries of the police in an African
country.
But to be a funnel for private money to Georgia's president, in
exchange for a
fee? Inner City Press has repeatedly asked UNDP how much they collected
in
fees, without response.
News analysis: Now
UNDP has been criticized by not
only the United States, for its financial irregularities in North Korea
and
elsewhere, but also by Russia, for its politicized (and privatized)
program in
Georgia. As previously noted, France and
the UK are loath to criticize UN bodies, since being in the UN as
Permanant
Five members of the Security Council so magnifies their power. But UNDP
is out
of control; its failure to meaningful respond to Lavrov's critique is
only the
most recent example.
Watch this site, and this (UN) debate.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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[at] innercitypress.com
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earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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