Free Republic

GENEVA Escape from New York Is it necessary for a cash-strapped organization whose mandate is to preserve world peace and fight poverty to occupy one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in one of the world's most costly cities? This is the question that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan failed to address when he requested that the General Assembly approve a disbursement of $1.6 billion for the necessary refurbishment of the UN headquarters building in New York. A subsidiary question, which has also not been entertained is why imaginative and less onerous solutions have not been investigated. While...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A blown fuse cut power to the top 23 floors of the U.N. headquarters on Monday, sending nonessential staff home on the third day of the annual General Assembly debate. Officials said there had been no threat against the building, and the debate continued uninterrupted. The U.N. Web site was down as was phone service in the 39-story tower on Manhattan's East Side. The outage forced U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to relocate his lunch with the foreign ministers and ambassadors of the five permanent members of the Security Council, Britain, France, Russia, China and the United...

Barry Rosen of New York, left, and Kevin Hermening of Wausau, Wisconsin, center, holding pictures of themselves taken while in captivity during the Iran Hostage Crisis, take part in a silent vigil outside Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005. The event protested the visit of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, to the United States. A photograph of Bert Moore, right, taken while in captivity as a hostage during the Iran Hostage Crisis, is held by his son Bob Moore, who was at the vigil in memory of his father who died five...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A California man was in custody on Friday after trying to enter a parking garage near U.N. headquarters with two firearms and a five-gallon container of gasoline in his car, U.N. and police officials said. Vernon Wilker, 59, from Salton City, California, told law enforcement authorities he had a property dispute in California and was coming to the United Nations to file a lawsuit, U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Wilker had not yet been charged and was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan criminal court, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney's office said.Wilker, driving a Ford...

President Bush indicated Thursday that the new Iranian president will receive a U.S. visa to attend an annual United Nations gathering next month and welcomed the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency's warning to Tehran about consequences of its nuclear ambitions. Bush, who met at his Texas ranch with members of his foreign policy team, also said that U.S. investigators still have not yet determined what role Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have played in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Even so, Bush said, the United States has separate obligations to other countries as the host nation for...

TEHRAN: Iran confirmed on Sunday that hardline president-elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad will attend the UN General Assembly in New York in September, dismissing any possible US visa restrictions in the wake of allegations of his role in the US embassy siege. “Yes, Mr Ahmadinejad and the accompanying delegation will go to New York to take part in the UN world summit, he will also meet with the Iranians there,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. Asefi again denied US allegations about Ahmadinejad’s possible role in the 1979 hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran following the Islamic revolution, a...

Real estate mogul Donald Trump should bid on a United Nations renovation contract if he thinks he can do the job cheaper and better than anyone else, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. Trump told a U.S. Senate hearing last week that the United Nations would commit to a boondoggle of immense proportions if it goes ahead with its plan to renovate the outdated United Nations secretariat, a project it says will cost about $1 billion. Trump predicted that if the U.N. continues with its proposal, the cost will balloon to $3 billion. And he argued that he could do the...

Donald Trump, regarding the United Nations' remodeling plan: Senator, congratulations. You've got a mess on your hands. The Senate International Security Subcommittee, chaired by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, was holding a hearing yesterday into the proposed $1.5 billion refurbish project of the United Nations building. One of the star witnesses was The Donald. Just on pure theater, it was fun to watch. In case you missed it, here's Trump's testimony. It's long, but I promise you it's worth it: 07-22thedonald.mp3 Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee. It's a great honor to have been invited,...

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump (search) is the only person standing between an honest deal to rebuild the aging U.N. headquarters and a massive waste of public money. He told senators so on Thursday. "When can you start?" said one appreciative lawmaker, Sen. Mark Dayton (search), D-Minn. The United Nations says it will cost $1.2 billion to overhaul the 39-story building along New York's East River. No, says the city's highest-profile developer. More like $3 billion, he told senators. This project is no more challenging, he said, when he refurbished the skating rink in Central Park. That was years ago, when...

Late last week, the New York State senate refused to endorse a United Nations capital master renovation plan, which would have ceeded a nearby city park to the world body. With the legislature now on a summer recess, the U.N. plan as currently envisaged is essentially dead. The United Nations is in the process of trying to overhaul its signature 38-story glass walled Secretariat building. Not only is its foundation slowly descending into the nearby East River, it is also loaded with asbestos, which federal and city authorities insist must be removed. The U.N. had hoped to build a new...

United Nations delegates, welcome to ... Brooklyn? U.N. planners have found commercial space across the East River in Brooklyn that could serve as a temporary home while the United Nations' iconic glass-and-steel headquarters in Manhattan gets a long-overdue renovation, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report Monday. The report assessed where things stand with plans to renovate the U.N. secretariat building, which was considered modern when it was constructed 50 years ago but now violates most New York City fire and safety codes. The 38-story tower has no sprinkler system, is packed with asbestos, and loses about 25 percent of...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - United Nations delegates, welcome to ... Brooklyn? U.N. planners have found commercial space across the East River in Brooklyn that could serve as a temporary home while the United Nations' iconic glass-and-steel headquarters in Manhattan gets a long-overdue renovation, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report Tuesday. The report assessed where things stand with plans to renovate the U.N. secretariat building, which was considered modern when it was constructed 50 years ago but now violates most New York City fire and safety codes. The 38-story tower has no sprinkler system, is packed with asbestos, and loses...

Americans grew up with kind feelings toward the United Nations. Many remain nostalgic about their childhood UNESCO Halloween buckets and UNICEF Christmas cards. Such goodwill explains why we host the organization and cover a quarter of its operating budget. The U.N. arose out of the ashes of World War II and was the dream of Western idealists who sought to enact liberal notions of human rights and jurisprudence on a global scale. Only a humane transnational body, it was felt, could avoid a repeat of the 50 million lives lost in World War II. A Security Council of great powers...

Senator, Trump Seek Cheaper U.N. Repairs By JEFFREY McMURRAY Associated Press Writer April 6, 2005, 5:51 PM EDT WASHINGTON -- The United Nations has yet to hire a company to renovate its New York headquarters, but a senator already is making the case that it's time to say "You're fired" if the cost comes close to the $1.2 billion loan the world body is seeking from Congress. After speaking on Wednesday with real estate developer Donald Trump, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., introduced a measure that would cap the loan at $600 million. Trump told Sessions, a longtime critic of the...

WASHINGTON — Documents seen by FOX News suggest a conflict of interest may exist between Kofi Annan's (search) son, the Swiss company he worked for and the United Nations. Congressional investigators are examining those records and thousands of pages of others as part of their probe into the controversial U.N. Oil-for-Food (search) program. FOX News was permitted to review some documents but not make copies. Kojo Annan (search), the son of the U.N. secretary general, claims he has never been involved directly or indirectly with any business related to the United Nations. And Cotecna Inspection S.A., the company Kojo worked...

I recall (imperfectly) that back in the 1960's there was a mortar attack on the UN Headquarters building. I seem to recall that someone set up a mortar in Brooklyn and fired into the UN Headquarters building in Manhattan. Am I alone im my recollection f this event, or can some freeper help me? With all the attendant finger pointing regarding a mortar attack on a mess tent in Iraq, with the obligaroty hand wringing and witch hunt for the "responsible party", I would be interested to recall who the "responsible party" was when the UN was attacked all those...

GENEVA: The United Nations European headquarters, where a listening device was discovered in a ministerial meeting room, is probably rife with secret spying equipment, a UN security source said yesterday. "It's like Swiss cheese," a UN security source said, referring to the Swiss Emmenthal cheese which contains holes. If we had the technnical means and staff for thorough searches, I'm certain that we would find one microphone after another. The UN in New York and Vienna are the same," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. Marie Heuze, chief UN spokeswoman in Geneva, on Thursday confirmed the report by...

Awash in scandal and mulling a sweeping reorganization, the United Nations is trying to take over a small - some diplomats have dared say insignificant - city park to expand its world headquarters. In New York, that's like Goliath taunting David, and with a tide of anti-UN sentiment rising across the country, the scheme has provided what state Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) called "a wonderful opportunity to stick it in the eye of these bastards." Proponents of the $25 million plan are trying to convince state legislators to approve a process that could end with the UN building a 35-story...

Dealing Bloomberg a Setback, Senate Balks at U.N. Project By AL BAKER Published: December 3, 2004 ALBANY, Dec. 2 - The Republicans who control the State Senate dealt a rebuke to a fellow Republican, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, on Thursday, scuttling legislation he had long championed to allow the United Nations to move forward with a planned renovation and expansion of its headquarters on the East Side of Manhattan. Passage of a bill to let the United Nations expansion project go forward had been high on the mayor's list of priorities in Albany. But anti-United Nations sentiment among Senate Republicans,...