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UNDP's Dervis Admits Paying Saakashvili Unwise,
Dodges on Congo Security and Kosovo Fees
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
October 22 -- After the UN
Development Program had defended paying
salary to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili
since Inner City Press exclusively reported on it, on Wednesday
UNDP
Administrator Kemal Dervis belatedly acknowledged that payments to such
high
officials "raises questions" and "may not be desirable."
Under
the rubric of UNDP's lack of impartiality, and as limited by UNDP to
post-conflict situations, Inner City Press asked Dervis about the
Georgia
program, about UNDP paying or
processing the salary of an ex-UN employee who
now works for the Kosovo government, and about a judgment against
UNDP in favor
of the widow of a UNDP consultant sent without security to Eastern
Congo and
killed. On this last, Dervis read an apology from notes, while mistakenly
locating the murder, and UNDP's negligence, as having been in
Kenya. Video
here,
from Minute 28:15.
After
Inner City Press had reported on UNDP's Georgia program, in which it
funneled
money from George Soros' Open Society Institute to President
Saakashvili and
his inner circle, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
denounced the program
as a "privatization of the UN." Wednesday Inner City Press asked
Dervis to respond to the criticism.
While
quickly saying, "I fully agree
with the Russian foreign minister," Dervis did not step away from
processing such money for OSI or other -- apparently any other -- private
foundation. UNDP takes a fee in such deals, although in recently months
UNDP's
spokesman has repeatedly declined to provide information about the fees
UNDP
charges. Ironic in light of this stonewalling, Dervis three times said
that
programs like that in Georgia "must be transparent."
UNDP's Dervis on Oct. 22, 2008, Kosovo and
security answers not shown
Regarding
the verdict against UNDP of 143,000 pounds, Dervis said that UNDP now
has the
ability, through the freedom of so-called ex gratia payments, to provide
support in such circumstances. Given the now-admitted inadvisability of
UNDP's
program to pay Georgia's president, it is doubtful that giving UNDP
less
oversight in payments is advisable. But what Dervis did not address --
along
with the
Kosovo question, which he did not answer at all -- was the lack of
security that UNDP provided to Joe Comerford when they sent him to the
Congo,
where he got killed. Click here
for more on the case.
This
seems to be a pattern with UNDP, which was criticized
in the UN's recent reports about the December 2007 bombing of UN
premises in
Algiers Yet Dervis has yet to take any questions on UNDP's actions
before the
Algiers bombing, and his spokesman declined to comment on or even
confirm
UNDP's vacature of its premises in Amman, Jordan, despite the UN's head
of
security confirming it to Inner City Press. Transparency, indeed...
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
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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