Published: July 31 2007 14:54 | Last updated: July 31 2007 14:54

The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday appeared poised to agree to a 26,000-strong joint UN-African force for Darfur, as Gordon Brown, the new UK prime minister, hailed the creation of the world’s largest peacekeeping operation during a speech in New York.

The decision – which should go ahead late Tuesday or Wednesday barring last-minute objections from capitals – follows months of tough negotiations over the force’s command structure and mandate, which required Khartoum’s consent.

In order to win agreement, the latest UK-French draft stepped back from earlier threats of new sanctions if the warring parties did not cooperate, and deleted the right to the “seizure and disposal” of illegal arms. The force will monitor arms instead.

But it retained references to Chapter 7, under which the UN can authorize the use of force for self-defence to ensure the free movement of humanitarian workers and to protect civilians.

Speaking at the United Nations in New York, Mr Brown called Darfur “the greatest humanitarian disaster the world faces today”, with 2 million displaced and 4 million dependent on food aid.

“The plan for Darfur from now on is to achieve a ceasefire, including an end to aerial bombings of civilians; drive forward peace talks (in Tanzania) and, as peace is established, offer to begin to invest in recovery and reconstruction.”

But he also warned that “if any party blocks progress and the killings continue, I and others will redouble our efforts to impose further sanctions.”

The resolution calls for a force of up to 19,555 soldiers and 3,772 police, alongside 19 ‘formed police units’ of 140 people each. It aims to establish an “initial operational capability” for its headquarters by October, and to achieve sufficient strength to carry out its mandate by the end of the year.

One of the most contentious issues was how to determine the chain of command in a ‘hybrid force’, with a number of potential contributors nervous at its unusual format – which was designed to win over Sudan’s opposition to a pure UN force.

The resolution asserts there will be “unity of command and control”, and that “command and control structures and backstopping” will be provided by the UN. Day-to-day decisions, however, will be taken by an African general, and the aim is for most of the troops to be African.

Peacekeeping officials concede the arrangement is not ideal, but are trying to make the best of what they have to work with.

Adoption of the resolution would be hailed the first significant international agreement that Gordon Brown helped to broker as prime minister.

British officials nonetheless admitted that the new force alone “can’t solve the problem – that’s why the peace talks starting this weekend in Arusha are so critical.”

In a separate development, the US House of Representatives agreed legislation on Monday to step up economic pressure on Khartoum.

The Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007 would require the US Department of the Treasury to publish and maintain a list of companies or entities whose business dealings directly benefit the regime in Khartoum. It also enables State and local governments to divest from those companies, and provides protection to fund managers from lawsuits brought by investors who disagree with any decision to divest.

”It is time to stop funding the war machine in Sudan,” said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. ”Evidence of mass slaughter, aerial bombardments, and forced displacements targeted against the African tribes in Darfur require us to take this action.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing dealt last week with the United Nations Human Rights Council performance. The newly named council was formed last year to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Last month, the Senate committee approved legislation proposed by Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., to end U.S. funding of the commission. Coleman pointed out that the watchdog group's almost exclusive focus on Israel and its failure to investigate other countries made it a "disgrace" and that the council "has essentially one issue on the agenda: Israel. You have got countries like North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, where you have state-sponsored brutality, and what we have from the council is deafening silence."

To the member states of the United Nations, the United States must appear as masochistic. Others around the world must think of us as chumps. America has endured a great deal of abuse at the U.N. along with Israel. Petty dictatorships, authoritarian regimes and other forms of non-democratic states are using American taxpayer funds to malign the U.S. and to pass judgment on America. If that is not bad enough, a quick look at the membership of the U.N. Human Rights Council - those charged with upholding universal human rights, according to the U.N. charter - is enough to sicken every American, unless he or she supports terrorist sponsoring states and abusers of human rights. Current members of the U.N. Human Rights Council include China, Cuba, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Sudan (Libya and Iran served previously, and Israel has been regularly excluded), a collection of some of the most abusive states in the world.

In Sudan, the Khartoum regime is directly responsible for the genocide in Darfur, where Arab militiamen called Janjaweed are murdering fellow Muslim African blacks. The same Khartoum regime has perpetrated genocide on black Christians in southern Sudan and on black Muslim Nubians.

In Saudi Arabia, slavery was officially practiced until 1962, and for all intents and purposes still exists. Women in Saudi Arabia are merely human chattel, and foreign laborers (especially women) are habitually raped and abused. Adulterers are often beheaded, and petty thieves get their limbs chopped off. Bringing a Bible into Riyadh airport may land a person in prison. Freedom of religion does not exist, and non-Muslims are not allowed to live permanently in Saudi Arabia or become citizens. There is no freedom of expression or freedom of the press. The Saud family runs the country as a monopoly, and its 25 million people have no say on how its oil revenues should be distributed.

Egypt's persecution of its Coptic-Christian fellow citizens is symptomatic of its religious intolerance toward non-Muslims. In the mid-1960s, Egypt, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s, used poison gas against the Yemenis.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, 19 Egyptian human rights organizations issued an appeal to the U.N., calling upon it not to include Egypt in the council. The message stated: "The organizations signed below express their puzzlement at Egypt's decision to submit its candidacy to the Human Rights Council. This decision is at odds with its real position on human rights, especially in light of its attacks, in recent years, on the constitutional and legislative provisions safeguarding human rights in Egypt, and in light of its actions, which violate the most basic principles of human rights."

China, Cuba, Nigeria and Pakistan are not exactly paragons of virtue either. Although Nigeria has recently held democratic elections, its human rights record, lawlessness, religious and ethnic strife, and corruption do not make it an example to follow. China, Cuba and Pakistan are repressive dictatorships. Consider for a moment Russia and China's contributions to the U.N. Together these veto-yielding permanent members of the Security Council contribute 3 percent to the U.N. budget, yet they have derailed humanitarian actions in Sudan and have tried to prevent serious sanctions against Iran's nuclear defiance.

The Human Rights Council voted to end inquiries into human rights abuses in Cuba and Belarus and to make permanent its inquiry of Israel. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on June 19 that she will offer an amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations legislation that would prohibit U.S. funding for the council. Earlier this year, the Human Rights Watch World Report warned that the U.N. Council "has quickly fallen prey to some of the same problems that doomed its predecessor."

"To its shame, the U.N. Human Rights Council celebrated its first birthday by giving gifts to Fidel Castro, the authoritarian regime in Belarus and the enemies of the democratic state of Israel." Ros-Lehtinen stated, adding that "the structure and work of the council, whose membership includes some of the world's most notorious human rights abusers, is hopelessly flawed and thoroughly compromised by gross political manipulation.

"The council's obsession with condemning the democratic state of Israel," Ros-Lehtinen said, while "Islamist terrorists massacre Palestinians in Gaza, has made it a mockery. By contrast, the council has failed to condemn genocide in Darfur, the sprawling gulag of North Korea, political and human rights abuses in Cuba and Belarus, and bloody repression in Burma and Zimbabwe."

The U.S. can do better than support the "poisonous charade" that is today's U.N. It is time for America to re-create a United Nations that would admit into its ranks states that are willing to abide by its original charter: "To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights of men and women and of nations large and small." The current U.N. Human Rights Council is an intolerable absurdity that must come to an end.

WASHINGTON—The House voted Tuesday to give legal protections to investors and state and local governments who decide to curtail investments in international corporations doing business in Iran and Sudan.

The bills, now heading to the Senate, provide safe harbor from lawsuits to managers of mutual funds and pension funds who divest funds from companies that invest more than $20 million in Iran's energy sector or in businesses that support Sudan's policies in Darfur.

The bills, said Finance Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass, will "empower Americans, in their individual capacities, through their state governments, through organizations, to express in a concrete way the overwhelming opposition in our country" to the genocide in Darfur and to Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capacity.

The votes were 418-1 on Darfur and 408-6 on Iran divestment.

Under both bills, the federal government is to periodically update a list of companies that do business with Sudan or Iran's energy sector. They note that while U.S. companies are already barred from involvement in Sudan or Iran's energy sector, many Americans are unaware of the business connections of the foreign companies they invest in.

The bills allow state and local governments to divest the assets of their pension funds and other funds under their control from any company on the list.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., sponsor of the Darfur measure, said 54 universities and 19 states have already taken steps to divest funds from companies investing in Sudan to protest the violence there that has killed some 400,000 people. She said the bill would also bar the federal government from renewing and signing contracts with multinationals doing business with the Khartoum government.

The Iran bill focuses on those international corporations investing at least $20 million in Iran's energy sector, selling munitions to Iran or extending credit of $20 million or more to the Iranian government.

The House separately was voting on a bill to expand existing sanctions on Iran to include business in that nation's liquefied natural gas and petrochemical industries. It makes export credit agencies, insurers and other financial institutions subject to sanctions for investment in Iran's energy industry.

"Responsible nations must immediately stop their multimillion, and in some cases billion, dollar investments in Iran's energy sector," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the sponsor.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh met former US secretary of state Colin Powell in Washington on Wednesday.

Hsieh said that during the meeting, Powell emphasized that the US policy remained that Washington opposes any unilateral action that would change the "status quo" across the Taiwan Strait.

Hsieh said, however, that there were differences between how Taiwan and the US define the "status quo."

Powell said that China had waged a psychological war against Taiwan over the past 50 years and encouraged Taiwan to be more confident.

Powell said he hoped Taiwan would continue to strengthen its democracy and enjoy more freedom. However, he said this did not mean Taiwan should challenge the "status quo."

He said that although the fairness of the US' "one China" policy is being questioned, the policy remains the most effective and feasible in terms of avoiding an escalation of tensions in the region.

Hsieh told reporters that the purpose of his visit to the US was to elaborate on his campaign platform and exchange views with US friends on important issues such as Taiwan's plan to hold a referendum on joining the UN under the name "Taiwan."

US State Department officials have expressed disapproval of the plan, saying that the US "opposes any initiative that appears designed to change Taiwan's status unilaterally."

In related news, 30 current and former members of the US House of Representatives attended a reception in the Capitol in honor of Hsieh on Wednesday, where they vowed to pursue close relations with Taiwan and called for the administration of US President George W. Bush to lift its ban on visits to Washington by top-level Taiwanese leaders.

The attendance of 27 current and three former members set a record for the number of Congressional members attending such a function. This was even higher than at receptions welcoming former president Lee Teng-hui and an event last year marking the fifth anniversary of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus.

House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Tom Lantos led Congress in praising Taiwan-US relations.

"I want to express my extraordinary admiration for the people of the remarkable island of Taiwan, who created under very difficult circumstances a prosperous and flourishing democracy," he said.

"Taiwan is a vibrant democracy and a powerful productive 21st century economy," Lantos said.

Lantos' Republican counterpart on the committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said there is a "broad bipartisan coalition" in Congress in favor of high-level visits.

Noting that Hsieh is a former premier, she said: "Sitting premiers should also be able to visit Washington."

Describing the nearly 1,000 missiles aimed at Taiwan as "an act of a bully," she said that Beijing should stop trying to force dialogue with Taiwan "through coercive measures."

Hsieh again made the case for Congress to pass legislation enabling top Taiwanese officials to visit Washington and talk with US government officials.

Citing a bill in Congress that would authorize such visits, Hsieh said: "I hope it can pass as soon as possible. I hope that if I am elected, I can come to Washington to meet you all again."

He also repeated his call for dialogue with Beijing.

If elected, he said: "I will make every effort to restore dialogue with China. But I will never accept any precondition to give up our sovereignty."

Many of the members of Congress who spoke at the reception urged the passage of legislation allowing visits by top-level Taiwanese leaders to Washington.

US visit

"I hope that Frank Hsieh can travel to the United States at any time under all circumstances, if he is elected," Robert Andrews, a leading House supporter of Taiwan, said, echoing the sentiments of other lawmakers in attendance.

The nation' top representative in Washington, Joseph Wu , praised Hsieh.

"He has the credentials [to be president] and he is a crafter of Taiwan's democracy," he said.

Hsieh left Washington yesterday morning for Detroit, the third city on his four- city US visit. He will be in the Detroit area for a day before flying to Los Angeles en route to Taipei.

tight-lipped

Hsieh was tight-lipped about his meetings with US officials during his three days of talks in Washington.

Under rules set by the State Department, Hsieh did not even directly confirm he had held talks at all.

But during his stay he is believed to have had breakfast with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns on Monday and to have met senior officers of the National Security Council (NSC) on Tuesday.

It was unclear whether, while at the NSC, he had met National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley or one of his aides.

Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

UNITED NATIONS — Two cases involving U.N. whistleblowers have received considerable attention in places as far away as Washington and Amsterdam recently, but some watchdog groups and American legislators say the cases highlight the capricious way the United Nations enforces its new rules meant to protect those who expose wrongdoing by their superiors. "Whistleblowers are extraordinarily important to be a check and balance on the misuse of authority and power," the House majority leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland, told The New York Sun during a U.N. visit on Monday, pointing to recent strengthening of protection rules in Congress.

The ranking Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, said Washington legislators and the American mission to the United Nations are following the U.N. cases closely. "We are very much worried about the whistle blowers, and making sure that there are no retributions" against them, she said.

The Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based organization that helped the United Nations write whistleblower protections two years ago, is following several cases at the United Nations. "It appears that the Secretariat makes the rules as it goes along," the international director of the project, Beatrice Edwards, said yesterday.

In one case, a former manager of the U.N. Development Program's Pyongyang office, Artjon Shkurtaj, exposed rules violations at the agency's North Korea office. As first reported by the Sun, his contract was not renewed and his reputation was publicly tarnished by UNDP spokesmen, among other forms of retaliation.

Mr. Shkurtaj currently awaits a decision by the U.N. ethics office, which would determine if he merits protection under the U.N. whistleblower policies. A U.N. spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said yesterday that no decision has been made yet, adding that the ethics office has asked for "additional time" to make its determination after its mandatory 45-day study period. Mr. Shkurtaj said that even as the ethics office awaits a decision the UNDP is piling up retaliatory statements about him in the press. Yesterday, Mr. Shkurtaj's case was widely reported in the Dutch press; the deputy UNDP administrator Ad Melkert, is Dutch. Meanwhile, several UNDP sources say other whistleblowers at the agency are awaiting the outcome of Mr. Shkurtaj's case before deciding whether they should expose wrongdoing there.

But even if the ethics office designates Mr. Shkurtaj as a whistleblower, the UNDP may not abide by the decision. Ms. Edwards said the GAP has followed the case of another UNDP whistleblower whom she declined to identify, who was designated as such by the U.N. ethics office. Six months later, she said, GAP received a letter from the director of the UNDP's office of legal and procurement support, James Provanzano, stating that the U.N. designation was "not applicable to separately administered funds," such as UNDP. The second whistleblower case in question, the one-woman struggle of a former official in the U.N. procurement department, Jane Redfern, recently led to several criminal convictions, including that of a top procurement officer, Sanjaya Bahel. Her trial testimony detailed her travails, including several forms of retaliation by her superiors.

Compelled to testify in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Ms. Redfern incurred legal fees of nearly $20,000, which she has asked the United Nations to reimburse. She currently is awaiting a decision by the U.N. undersecretary-general for management, Alicia Barcena. Asked about the policy governing reimbursing legal fees to whistleblowers, the U.N. spokeswoman, Ms. Okabe, said the decision is up to the secretary-general, "taking into account the interest of the organization."

In a prior case, the United Nations reimbursed the legal fees incurred by one of the central figures in the oil-for-food scandal, Benon Sevan. That decision was reversed after the Sun reported on the reimbursement in 2005, but not before an undisclosed sum was paid to Mr. Sevan's lawyer. In January, Mr. Sevan was indicted in U.S. District Court on charges related to the scandal.

WASHINGTON—A congressional delegate to the United Nations is pushing for the United States to cut off funding for the U.N. Human Rights Council, saying the watchdog group's focus on Israel and failure to investigate other countries made it a "disaster."

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Wednesday the council "has essentially one issue on its agenda—Israel. You've got countries like North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe where you have state-sponsored brutality, and what we have is deafening silence."

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee panel will take up the Human Rights Council's performance at a hearing Thursday. The committee last month approved legislation Coleman proposed to end U.S. funding of the council. The House last month approved similar legislation by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.

Coleman, who along with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., represents Congress in the U.S. delegation to the U.N., is a longtime critic of the U.N. Boxer also supported the funding cut off when the Foreign Relations Committee approved the bill.

The council, based in Geneva, was created in March 2006 to replace the widely discredited Human Rights Commission. Last month, the new body angered the United States by continuing its scrutiny of Israel while halting investigations into Cuba and Belarus.

Coleman conceded his bill was more about symbolism than pulling the plug on the council's operations. The U.S. share of the council budget is only around $3 million, and the bill would allow the president to ignore the funding cut if he deemed it wasn't in the national interest.

"It's not a lot of money," he said. "This is a statement about the concerns we have about the Human Rights Council."

The State Department declined to comment on Coleman's push to cut off U.S. financial support for the council.

But Assistant Secretary of State Kristen Silverberg called the council's first year "a grave disappointment. Member states abandoned their responsibility to defend suffering people in countries such as Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe, and Cuba and instead devoted their energies to attacking Israel."

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, July 23 -- When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon went to Washington last week, he was asked about his call, made six months ago, for a detailed external audit of the operations of the UN Development Program, to be conducted first in North Korea than elsewhere. The UN Board of Auditors still has not been allowed in to North, and it appears that no action has been taken on the Secretariat's second call, in late June, to begin a second phase of audit.

Monday, 48 days after UNDP whistleblower Tony Shkurtaj filed a complaint with the UN Ethics Office seeking protection against retaliation, Inner City Press asked:

Inner City Press: This idea that the UNDP complainant for whistle-blower status, I think it’s been said that they would rule in 45 days. So I think he turned in his complaint on 5 June. Is there now a ruling by the Ethics Office on whether the individual is a whistle-blower or not?

Deputy Spokesperson: I’m not aware there's been a ruling yet, but I can look into that for you.

[The Deputy Spokesperson later added that, as has been indicated previously, the Protection against Retaliation Bulletin (ST/SGB/2005/21) provides that the Ethics Office will seek to complete its preliminary review within 45 days. The Ethics Office has indicated that they require additional time and have also advised the complainant.]

So at the UN, a 90 day audit cannot be carried out in substance in over six months. And a 45-day review to determine if a complainant is a whistleblower, a determination that must be made before any protection can be offered, cannot for some unexplained reason be reached even in 45 days.

Close observers of the UNDP North Korea saga, the first scandal to erupt on Ban Ki-moon's watch, just 19 days into his term, offer a range of interpretations of the slow-down or gridlock. UNDP is dead-set against Mr. Shkurtaj being acknowledged as a whistleblower, because it would make a number of UNDP actions since January constitute retaliation, which itself is misconduct under UNDP rules.

On Monday afternoon, Inner City Press asked U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen what she thought of recent calls for UNDP Associate Administrator Ad Melkert to resign or be fired. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen replied that

"I want to make sure that the problems in the system are addressed rather than just boot one individual and then there'll be a feeling that, 'oh we've gotten rid of X, and so then the problem has been solved.' It's such a systemic problem, it has to be done in a more comprehensive way. That doesn't mean that that guy should keep his job, but sometimes when you start to roll heads, it gives you the feeling that you've dealt with the problem and let's move on, and it's far deeper than that."

While agreeing that the problems at UNDP run much "deeper," including lower, than Mr. Melkert, they also extend technically above him, to Mr. Kemal Dervis.

Those who thought Kemal Dervis would leave UNDP for a high post back in Turkey have started backing away from that prediction, given the electoral victory over the weekend of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom Dervis tangled while still Turkish finance minister.

Needing more than even to keep his UN post, within Dervis' and Melkert's UNDP, a renewed push has begun to stop all potential leaks. The agency has reportedly gone so far as to take offline the policy for handling counterfeit currency to which Shkurtaj alluded in his interview Friday with Inner City Press (and which Inner City Press put online, here.) It is said that another UNDP counter-attack is in the works. Word to the wise: retaliation against a whistleblower is itself misconduct...

Again, because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

UNITED NATIONS -- "Outrageous" was the reaction from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., when asked for comments on the spending activities by Iraq's ambassador to the U.N., Hamid al Bayati, in New York City.

Ros-Lehtinen was part of a high-powered delegation of U.S. representatives visiting U.N. headquarters in NYC. She and others, expressed surprise at stories recently appearing in NewsMax and the New York Post reporting how Iraq's U.N. mission staff has been squandering money originally earmarked for arms control.

Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Hamid al Bayati, has taken up residence at posh Trump World Tower ($22,000-a-month rent) while money originally intended to disarrm the Mideast mation is now spent to renovate the diplomat's old office, buy a second new office and refurbish his Park Avenue apartment.

The U.N. Security Council, with U.S. approval, transferred $40 million to the "Development Fund for Iraq" to finance Baghdad's request.

All while the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the Iraq war has cost U.S. taxpayers $660 billion and is increasing at $12 billion each month.

"We were never told about this. The Iraqi ambassador spending $22,000 a month to live at Trump World Tower is outrageous," explained Ros-Lehtinen, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The congresswoman insisted that hearings on the "unusual" Iraqi spending may be in store.

"There will be letters to try and find out what is going on, you can be sure," she added.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., also told NewsMax: "There is no excuse for such (Iraqi) spending, especially while the U.S. taxpayer has been footing a $660 billion war bill. The U.S. taxpayer has been extraordinarly generous when it comes to bringing democracy to Iraq, and this raises questions about how they are spending their money."

While House leaders expressed outrage, key members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- Joe Biden, D-Del., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., have remained silent on the issue.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad, who fielded questions from the visiting congressional delegation, had no comment.

UNITED NATIONS—The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Monday that Security Council members were finalizing a new draft resolution on Darfur that he hopes will speed up the deployment of a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force to the troubled region.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S., Britain and France had met with African nations and military planners to discuss a timeline for how quickly the 26,000-strong "hybrid" force could replace the undermanned and poorly equipped AU force currently in the region.

"The planners are here looking at the timeline issue and whether things could happen at a faster pace because it's in our interest to have an effective on the ground as soon as possible," he told reporters at U.N. headquarters.

He said the U.S., Britain and France hope to have a draft resolution ready to circulate to Security Council members this week, although they are still making changes to alleviate the concerns of some countries on the 15-member council and Sudan.

A previous draft resolution by Britain, France and Ghana earlier this month ran into stiff opposition from South Africa, whose ambassador called it "totally unacceptable."

Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, told The Associated Press in an interview that Khartoum still has "some problems regarding the mandate" of the force. He said Sudan wants to guarantee there will be an African commander of the force and an exit strategy for the troops to ensure "they do not stay forever."

The beleaguered 7,000-member AU force currently in Darfur has been unable to stop fighting between ethnic African rebels and pro-government janjaweed militia that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million in the last four years.

The U.N. and Western governments have pressed Sudan since November to accept a U.N. plan for the hybrid force to replace the AU troops, but Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir delayed action for months. In April, Sudan agreed to a "heavy support package" to strengthen the AU force, including 3,000 U.N. troops, police and civilian personnel along with aircraft and other equipment. In Khartoum, al-Bashir ended a tour of Darfur on Monday and described the region as largely peaceful.

"If one talks of lack of security, then it is not in Darfur. What they are talking about is Iraq, Palestine or Afghanistan, and I challenge them all to come here," the president said in a statement carried by the official media in West Darfur state capital of El Geneina.

Sudanese officials have repeatedly stated that Darfur is pacified since a May 2006 peace deal signed by the government and one rebel group. But the U.N. and international observers say violence has only worsened in the region since the agreement was signed.

Khalilzad said that while the U.S., Britain and France were willing to negotiate on minor issues in the draft, the countries were adamant about maintaining three core elements: that a single commander controls the force, a timeline be set for deploying the force as expediently as possible, and the resolution be mandated under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.

Chapter 7 deals with threats to peace and security and can be enforced through a range of measures, from breaking diplomatic and trade relations to military intervention.

Asked whether Sudan would agree to referring to Chapter 7 in the draft, Abdalhaleem said: "We are still discussing that with them. We would love to see the limits of the mandate."

Meanwhile, a congressional delegation led by U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, met with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Khalilzad in New York to urge them to move quickly on the Darfur crisis.

Hoyer said the group also consulted with the Chinese and Egyptian ambassadors to the U.N. on using their influence with Sudan to push the country to allow the hybrid force to enter Darfur.

China, which imports two-thirds of Sudan's oil, has opposed harsh measures against Sudan over the Darfur conflict. It is one of the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council.

Steven Edwards CanWest News Service

Friday, July 20, 2007

NEW YORK -- Former justice minister Irwin Cotler and other Canadian scholars presented the U.S. Congress on Thursday with its first testimony on Jews driven from Arab lands following Israel's creation in 1948.

"The time has come to rectify this historical injustice," Cotler told members of the congressional human rights caucus in Washington in a written statement.

The witnesses were among experts helping U.S. lawmakers decide on a pair of bills that would oblige the Bush administration to actively oppose the Arab-led practice in Middle East peace efforts to speak only of Palestinian refugees.

While key Arab voices continue to push for a "right of return" for descendants of some 600,000 Palestinians whose pre-1948 homes are now inside Israel, the general discourse for decades has all but ignored the tens of thousands of Jews, Christians and other minorities who were similarly turned into refugees.

Cotler charged that the United Nations bears "express responsibility for the distorted narrative." Arab countries have mustered majority backing from Muslim and developing states to pass 101 UNresolutions that refer only to Palestinian refugees.

Jews in Arab lands totalled almost 900,000 in 1948, but there are fewer than 8,000 in 10 Arab countries today, Cotler said. Arab countries counter that 3.7 million Palestinians remain in refugee camps in the region, whereas Jewish refugees moved on to new lives in Israel and elsewhere.

Cotler is considered a leading expert on the issue, having helped produce a 2003 study entitled Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress.

Co-authored by fellow Canadian Stan Urman, who also testified in Washington, the study spoke of new evidence that Arab states reacted to the creation of Israel by orchestrating the persecution of their Jewish citizens.

"Today, we cannot allow a second injustice, namely for the international community to recognize rights for (only) one victim population," said Urman, executive director of New York-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries.

The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are expected to vote before the end of the year on the bills that prompted the hearing.

The Senate bill urges President George W. Bush to ensure that the peace process acknowledges that the Arab-Israeli conflict has created "multiple refugee populations."

The House document would ensure that any peace agreement addresses the rights of all refugees, "including Jews, Christians, and other populations displaced from countries in the region."

The legislation is significant because the United States, along with Russia, the UN and the European Union, is one of the four international powers that are seeking to restart the stalled Middle East peace process. Bush called for a renewed push on Monday.

The congressional hearing unfolded as former British prime minister Tony Blair, in his new job as the special Middle East envoy for the four powers, met in Lisbon with representatives of the so-called Quartet.

A third Canadian giving testimony was Henry Green, now a professor of religious studies and sociology at the University of Miami.

"In 1948, there was a surge in state-legislated discrimination and repressive measures that made life for Jews in Arab lands simply untenable," he said.

No Arab experts testified, but an Arab TV station monitored proceedings.

"International apathy must end," said Republican Representative Ileana Ros- Lehtinen, the ranking minority member of the House foreign affairs committee.

The U.S. Congress urged punishment for the perpetrators of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Argentina.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehitnen (R-Fla.), the ranking Republican on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the resolution on Wednesday, the 13th anniversary of the Buenos Aires bombing that killed 85 people. The resolution condemns the attack, memorializes the victims and praises the Argentine government for its investigation, which has yet to yield the arrest and trial of the perpetrators.

In November 2006 Argentine officials issued arrest warrants to former Iranian government officials and a leader of Hezbollah, but the arrests were never carried out. The resolution urges Interpol to finalize its March 2007 decision to issue capture notices for the alleged perpetrators.

“The memory of this tragic day reminds us of the suffering endured by the victims and their families, and the obligation we all share to bring justice those responsible for the murder of innocents,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

NEW YORK - Need a passport in a hurry? Good luck!

You can pay extra for expedited service from the State Department, but there are no guarantees. You can ask for an appointment at a passport center, but you may not get one. You can ask your congressman to intervene. Or you can hire a private expediter. Whatever you do, the experience may leave you bitter.

"The last few months have been the most expensive, the most frustrating and the most nerve-racking time that I've had in my life," said James Meehan, 21, a University of Southern California student who spent hours on the phone and hours at the federal building in Los Angeles trying to get the passport he applied for in May for a trip to Brazil in July. It didn't arrive in time, so he also had to pay to change his tickets. "There's nobody to help and there's nobody to care," Meehan said. "You really do not have a voice. After all the problems I faced, who am I going to call? President Bush? The Better Business Bureau? I can't take my service elsewhere. It's not like canceling a cell phone." The six-week process for obtaining a passport ballooned to 12 weeks when new regulations were imposed in January requiring passports for air travel from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Last month those rules were relaxed. Now Americans returning from those countries only need a receipt showing they applied for a passport.

But a backlog in processing passports remains. Here are options for desperate travelers, with anecdotes about how well they work.

-You can pay $60 plus overnight delivery fees for expedited service from the State Department. "The process can generally be completed in about two to three weeks," said Ann Barrett, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services.

Maura Harty, assistant secretary of consular affairs, said that "we regularly provide passports in one day or, in some cases, the same day, for travelers with urgent needs," including "life-and-death emergencies."

For leisure travel, Jessica Labaire of TNT Vacations in Boston said the expedited service "often works, but in many cases, it has not worked. It's been completely sporadic." Many TNT customers canceled trips this year when passports did not arrive in time. "We estimate a 10 to 20 percent loss in business because of this," she said. Jacqueline Hahey, 25, of Scottsdale, Ariz., applied for an expedited passport in May and got it in a week, in time for a trip to Costa Rica. "I"d just heard so many horrible stories, I almost fell over when it arrived at my door," she said. "But it's really so random - it's the luck of the draw."

-You can try getting help or an appointment by phone. "We encourage applicants seeking expedited service to contact us first for an appointment. Depending on the situation, we may be able to provide expedited service without having them come to a passport office," said Barrett. But getting through isn't easy. "After 10 to 15 minutes of dead silence on the phone, you get a recording that says, 'We're sorry, there are no appointments available.' Then they hang up on you," said Meehan.

Amy Pennar, 22, of Tempe, Ariz., applied for a passport 14 weeks before her June 2 wedding in Poland. She panicked when it hadn't arrived by mid-May. "I'm frantically calling every day, but it would take two hours to get through, and so many people are on hold, it just hangs up on you," said Pennar.

-You can contact your congressional representative. With help from Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Pennar got her passport, and made it to the church in Krakow on time. "We've had well over 200 cases in just the past two months," said Flake spokesman Matt Specht.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who called the passport backlog "outrageous, incomprehensible, unconscionable" at a July 11 congressional hearing, has helped 100 constituents with passport problems.

Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., has helped 240 families, including Matt Stuart. When Stuart's passport hadn't arrived 15 weeks after applying, his fiancee got 200 people to e-mail Sarbanes with the subject line, "Save Matt Stuart's honeymoon!" Sarbanes' staff got a July 17 appointment for Stuart at a passport office, and he hopes to get the passport in time for a July 19 departure for Venice. "Otherwise we'll be honeymooning in Ocean City, Maryland," said the bride, Crystalyn Thienpont, who directs "word-of-mouth services" at MGH Advertising in Owings Mills, Md. "I'm glad that we could help the honeymooners - which we obviously would have done regardless of the e-mails," Sarbanes said.

-You can pay a private expediter. Some 200 private companies are authorized by the State Department to obtain passports on behalf of others, according to Robert Smith, director of the National Association of Passport and Visa Services. NAVP represents 20 of the largest expediters, handling hundreds of thousands of passport applications a year. Each company is allotted a quota of daily appointments at passport offices. But they can't fish your passport out of the bureaucracy if you've already applied, unless you cancel your original application and start the process over. Demand for expediting services has increased, but the number of applications individual expediters are allowed to submit has decreased, Smith said. "Every day we're turning away people," said Smith. "We're not able to serve everyone who's looking for help." CIBT Inc., the nation's largest expediter with offices in seven cities, charges $174 to get a passport in four days or more, and $254 for a "super-rush emergency," said spokesman Steven Diehl. "We've seen a 50 percent increase in passport work during the first six months of 2007, and we've nearly doubled our call volume."

CIBT deals mostly with tour operators and corporate clients, but has been able to accommodate most requests from the public, Diehl said.

The State Department expects nearly 18 million passport applications this year, up from 12.1 million last year. The agency hired extra staff and ordered diplomats home with a goal of "reducing passport turnaround time to normal levels by the end of the year," said Harty. "The passport situation is a top priority at the State Department, and we are devoting resources and personnel to getting back on track."

Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

An apologetic official acknowledged Wednesday that the State Department failed to anticipate the flood of passport applications this year that resulted in long delays and disrupted summer travel plans.

"No one is more aware than I am that in the past several months many travelers who applied for a passport did not receive their document in time for their planned travel. I deeply regret that," Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, told a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

She said the department had predicted that passport issuance would rise from 12.1 million last year to 16.2 million this year with the implementation in January of new national security rules requiring those returning by air from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda to present a passport. Instead, applications are expected to be near 18 million this year, and the normal six- week process for getting a passport ballooned to 12 weeks this spring.

"We failed to predict the record-setting compressed demand," Harty said. "I do sincerely regret that we missed the mark on that number."

That failed to fully satisfy some lawmakers, whose offices have been besieged with calls from constituents panicked that they weren't getting the passports they needed for summer trips abroad. Several compared the poor planning - Congress passed the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative in late 2004 - to the lack of preparedness for Hurricane Katrina.

Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., called it a "national embarrassment." Millions of Americans, he said, "have been reduced to begging and pleading, waiting for months on end, simply for the right to travel abroad."

"It's outrageous, incomprehensible, unconscionable," said Rep. Ileana Ros- Lehtinen, top Republican on the panel. She said her office in Florida had been "flooded with calls from frustrated would-be travelers."

Harty listed several "unknowable" factors for the unexpected surge in applications. She said many people mistakenly believed that the passport requirement also applied to land and sea entry even though that phase of the law won't go into effect until 2008 at the earliest.

She also said that many applicants had no immediate travel plans, and appeared to want passports out of a growing sense that, in a climate of concern over terrorist threats, they need proof of citizenship. "The passport is becoming like some form of a national ID card," she said.

She said the State Department has responded to the backlog through such steps as hiring 2,500 new staff in the past three years, ordering young diplomats to help out in clearing the backlog, operating two or three shifts at passport offices, and opening some offices on Saturday for emergency appointments. She said the processing time was now down to about 10 weeks and they were committed to returning it to the six-week waiting period.

Last month the State Department waived the passport rule until the end of September for travelers who could show proof that they had applied for a passport.

Homeland Security Department senior official Paul Rosenzweig, who also testified, said there's been a 98 percent or better compliance rate for affected air travelers since the new passport rules went into effect on Jan. 23.

He said that when the new border document rules, aimed at better monitoring people entering and leaving the country, are fully implemented it will take only 10 to 20 seconds to verify identities. Currently it takes up to 90 seconds to process the 8,000 different kinds of information travelers can use to identify themselves at the border.

US lawmakers Wednesday slammed a boycott of Israeli universities promoted by pro-Palestinian British academics as an anti-Semitic step that would undermine Middle East peace efforts.

In a unanimous voice vote, the House of Representatives passed a resolution attacking the boycott call from the leadership of the University and College Union (UCU), Britain's largest trade union for academics.

"When Israel comes under attack from hatemongers, it is American values that are also under attack," said Democratic member Patrick Murphy, the resolution's main sponsor.

"Limiting academic exchanges and shrinking the marketplace of ideas only limits our ability to bring peace to the Middle East and to help solve the Israeli- Palestinian conflict," he said.

If adopted by the UCU's full membership, the initiative could see British academics no longer writing for journals published by Israeli universities and refusing travel to Israel for conferences.

In May, the UCU leadership said "Israel's 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement."

But Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the planned boycott "represents a dangerous assault on the principles of academic freedom and open exchanges."

"The boycotting of Israeli academics only serves to demonize the state of Israel," she said, while Democrat Sheila Jackson-Lee accused the UCU of "anti- Semitism."

The UCU's call has been condemned by both the British and Israeli governments, as well as more than 250 other British academics who took out a full-page advertisement in The Times in May to attack the boycott.

The Transport and General Workers Union, which has 800,000 members across Britain, voted at its annual conference last week to shun products from Israel.

"As with South Africa, a boycott played a key part in liberating that country from apartheid," said Barry Camfield, the union's assistant general secretary.

"Now, we work to liberate the Palestinian people from their suffering at the hands of the Israeli state's military machine."

But Britain's National Union of Journalists has decided against implementing a resolution by its members to boycott Israeli goods and services, rejecting "firmly any allegations that the union was anti-Semitic or racist."

United Nations - It took three years for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, to make her first official visit to Washington. When she finally made her way to the capital last month, the cause she found herself advocating was none other than her own.

The House and Senate have introduced bills that call for cutting off American funds to the much-maligned U.N. Human Rights Council, to which Arbour's office serves as a secretariat. And in the wake of comments that Arbour made about a British union's proposed boycott of Israeli academics, New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner has demanded Arbour's dismissal, saying that her "antisemitic statements" made her unfit to serve as high commissioner.

With Congress casting an increasingly critical eye on the U.N.?s human rights operations, Arbour traveled from Geneva to distance her office from the Human Rights Council; the council?s first anniversary last month unleashed a torrent of criticism for its failure to shed the politicization that characterized the Commission on Human Rights, which it replaced.

"The Office of the Human Rights Commissioner is not the Human Rights Council," Arbour told the Forward at U.N. headquarters in New York, summarizing what she had told her interlocutors in Washington, including Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Lantos. "For those who have lost faith in the council, it is very important that they don't write off the office of the high commissioner."

Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a bill introduced by Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman that would bar American funding of the Human Rights Council for at least two years. A similar amendment sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, was adopted by the House last month.

The bills do not include provisions for cutting American contributions to Arbour's office, which currently make up 22% of the office's $245 million budget, and the Senate bill was amended to include a presidential waiver. But according to Felice Gaer, director of the American Jewish Committee?s Jacob Blaunstein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, the legislation is nonetheless cause for concern, and not just for Arbour.

"Enactment of those measures, even with a waiver, begins a descent on a slippery slope that poses more danger to the entire human rights enterprise at the U.N. than most people realize," Gaer said.

Arbour, a Canadian judge who was the first prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration's human rights record. During last summer's war in Lebanon, she suggested that Israeli leaders could be charged with war crimes.

In addition to Arbour having earned the ire of Washington and Jerusalem for such public statements, last month a letter from Weiner to the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, accused her of antisemitism. The New York Democrat expressed outrage that Arbour had said it was a "good thing" for Britain's largest labor union to consider a boycott of Israeli goods and academics. He argued that she was "unfit to hold such an important office and should be dismissed immediately."

Arbour is pulling no punches in her defense, arguing that the quote, which was given at a May 31 press briefing, was taken out of context.

"I said I thought it was a good thing for academics to have a debate on this issue but that, as human rights commissioner, I did not have an opinion on the outcome," she told the Forward. "To base such attacks on those remarks cheapens the debate tremendously."

Her boss, it appears, concurs. A Ban spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told the Forward that after reviewing the issue, the secretary general concluded that Arbour "made no antisemitic remarks, nor was anything antisemitic implied in her remarks."

Major Jewish groups have also refrained from leveling charges of antisemitism against Arbour. But they are not so quick to acquit the high commissioner when it comes to judging the first year of the Human Rights Council, during which it adopted nine country-specific condemnatory resolutions, every single one of them focusing on Israel.

While she acknowledges that the singling out of Israel is a problem, she points out that the agenda item allows scrutiny of the actions of all parties ? an improvement over a similar item adopted by its predecessor, the Human Rights Commission, which only examined Israeli abuses. Moreover, she predicts that the council?s record will improve in the coming years, first and foremost because the council will examine all U.N. member states.

Asked about her role vis-à-vis the council, she explained that her office was merely serving as its secretariat and that she had little influence over its decisions, including the recent selection of Libya to chair a conference on racism in 2009. ?It is a self-propelled inter-government body and a quintessentially political body,? she said.

While her critics in the Jewish communal world agree, they regret that she did not use her moral voice to shape a better outcome. They also note that she had supported the agreement reached last month and even lobbied her own government to back it.

"No one is saying she's the reason for the council debacle, but she has a major role as a moral voice in the U.N. human rights apparatus," said Hillel Neuer, who heads the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch. "The question is whether she has done all she could to speak out against the singling out of Israel. I don't think she has done even the minimum."

Arbour countered that while exercising her moral authority would satisfy many, ?the chances of it accomplishing anything are relatively small.