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UNDP's Funding of Saakashvili Causes Russian Uproar,
For-Ex Stonewalling Continues
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
September 11 -- As the UN Executive
Board lurched through the fourth of its five day meeting, with UNDP
management
having stoked its its ostensible overseers into demanding it re-open
the flow
of money to Kim Jong Il's North Korea, one of UNDP's equally dubious
programs on
the other side of the political spectrum fell under fire. It involves
UNDP
having paid salary to Georgian president Saakashvili, with its own
funds and
those of George Soros' Open Society Institute. Inner City Press
first reported
on the program in December 2006, then again on August
25, 2008, click here for that
story. This was picked up by Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly
Churkin and
by Russian media. See examples here, here and here.
The
question to be answered is, are the members of UNDP's Executive Board
really
informed by UNDP management what type of programs are going on?
Meanwhile,
despite the Executive Board president's gushing on September 10 that no
member
disagreed with the head-long rush to return to Pyongyang, even in the
face of
uncertainty if Kim Jong Il is on his death bed or dead, possibly
toppled by
even harder-line generals who have restarted that country's nuclear
program, in
front of the Security Council Inner City Press asked U.S. Ambassador
Khalilzad for
the U.S. Mission position, video here
at Minute 6:43:
Inner City Press: UNDP has been
meeting this week. The US position seems to be that the UNDP should go
back to
North Korea. Do you feel--
Ambassador Khalilzad: We
have been under the view that there is a
need for steps to make sure that some of the problems that have been
listed
will not take place again. Thank you.
But when
Inner City Press asked UNDP's spokesman early on September 11 for a
copy of
Regional Directly Ajay Chhibber's so-called "roadmap" to return to
North Korea, which even the Executive Board president said should be
distributed and made transparent, it was not provided.
UNDP's Dervis, funding to Saakashvili,
roadmap and Russian response not shown
Also in
front of the Security Council on September 11, Inner City Press asked
Ban
Ki-moon's envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari to explain the UN system's
silence
while it was losing 20% of aid funds to the Than Shwe regime. "Matthew, I hope you raise that with
[OCHA's] John Holmes and with UNDP." Video here,
from Minute 7:19.
Well, Inner
City Press has had currency exchange loss questions pending with UNDP
for weeks
and weeks, and has repeated sent reminded, still with no response. This
did not impinge on the self-congratulatory dream world of some
Executive Board delegates cooking up rubber stamp resolutions in
Conference Room C in the UN's basement on the night of September
11. Nor did it stop once and future UNDP-er Jan Mattsson for
patting himself on the back for finally getting an audit of the UN
Office for Project Services after seven years, and moving to pay off a
blatant cost overrun for Afghan elections in 2005. It all cuminates, he
told the Board on September 11, in a new UNOPS web site, in three
languages: English, French and Spanish. Maybe that's why Russia didn't know about
the funding to Saakashvili...
Meanwhile,
UNDP has not provided answers as simple as the volume of fees it
collects as a conduit for funding for prisons and military barracks all
over the world, and to pay an ex-UN
Kosovo Mission staffer to work for Kosovo's government. Not only
could this dubious middle-man role raise more Russian questions about
UNDP -- more generally, it is for
reasons like these that many believe that UNDP is an opaque,
unaccountable and
even corrupt organization.
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
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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