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As UN Admits Risk Assessments Not Done, Top Brass Jostle For Position

UNITED NATIONS, May 5, updated -- Despite the massive funds raised for it, the UN's Capital Master Plan has an amateur quality to it. Most recently, CMP director Michael Adlerstein back-dated a letter in which he implicitly takes back an earlier claim that all necessary Security Risk Assessments had already been completed.

   Meanwhile, Adlerstein's boss Angela Kane of the Department of Management is said to be making a play to avoid relocation across First Avenue, now telling the Outreach Division of the UN's Department of Public Information that it should relinquish its space in the library to Kane, and instead be relocated twice.

    Sources tell Inner City Press this shows a double standard: workers at the UN are impacted -- fired in the cafeteria, relocated even now in other units -- while their purported leaders seek special benefits and do not, as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon once promised, "lead by example."

   Mr. Ban on Tuesday gave a press conference largest about the UN's report on Gaza and, as asked by Inner City Press, Sri Lanka (click here for that). But when asked about how often he is away from Headquarters, Ban said that he spends a lot of time managing the UN.

    But why then, for example, has there been little action taken on the expose of controlled substance irregularities in the UN Medical Service? 

UN's Ban and Angela Kane, Risk Assessments and relocations not shown

  Why is the head of security David Veness still in place a year after he resigned after the bombing of the UN in Algiers? Source say Veness has been told to clean up the mess caused by the lack of risk assessment. Veness has passed it on to Mohammad Bani-Faris, who asked Adlerstein to sign a letter responding to criticism. Adlerstein did not want to sign, so Bani-Faris sent the letter himself on April 28, click here to view.

   Then -- perhaps after Inner City Press' May 4 report of Adlerstein blaming UN Security -- on May 5 a letter from Adlerstein surfaced, back-dated, the Staff Union alleges, to April 23, click here to view, with near-identical language to Bani-Faris' April 28 missive. While some laugh at this chaos, others don't -- for example, the food service workers in the cafeteria who were unceremoniously told this week that layoffs start on August 2. They were still grumbling on Tuesday -- click here for Inner City Press' article on Monday -- and asking about others being impacted. Watch this site.

  Click here for a new YouTube video, mostly UN Headquarters footage, about civilian deaths in Sri Lanka.

Click here for Inner City Press' March 27 UN debate

Click here for Inner City Press' Feb 26 UN debate

Click here for Inner City Press' review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate

Click here from Inner City Press' December 12 debate on UN double standards

and this October 17 debate, on Security Council and Obama and the UN.

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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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