Posted on 01/22/2007 6:18:35 AM PST by Valin
Ban's Reform Call The U.N. responds to our Cash for Kim reporting.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has been on the job for less than a month, but with a 26-word announcement Friday he did more to reform that international body than anything ever attempted by predecessor Kofi Annan.
"The Secretary-General will call for an urgent, system wide and external inquiry into all activities done around the globe by the U.N. funds and programs." So said Mr. Ban's spokesman after the Secretary-General met with Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the United Nations Development Program. The key word here is "external." Concerns about corruption in the U.N.'s Oil for Food program bubbled for years before Mr. Annan finally agreed to set up the independent Volcker Commission.
The proximate cause for Friday's meeting between Messrs. Ban and Melkert, and for Mr. Ban's clean-house announcement, was Melanie Kirkpatrick's op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal on Friday detailing irregularities in the UNDP's programs in North Korea and citing U.S. concerns that tens of millions of dollars in hard currency have been funneled to dictator Kim Jong Il.
The UNDP must have got Mr. Ban's memo. We publish today a letter in The Wall Street Journal (available here) from the agency's Mr. Melkert, responding to Ms. Kirkpatrick's article and our accompanying editorial. "We . . . welcome an independent and external audit of our operations in North Korea," he writes. And, "If the member states of the U.N. and UNDP's board were to decide that our presence there were no longer useful, we would leave immediately."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Who's keeping tabs on the tsunami money which Kofi somehow gained control of.
WOOOHOOO Scott! Scott Garrett for President!
tsunami money which Kofi somehow gained control of.
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