Steps to end suffering in Darfur

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UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. ethics chief said there was enough initial evidence to support an investigation into claims by a former U.N. employee that he lost his job in retaliation for concerns he raised about his agency's work in North Korea, according to a letter obtained Monday. Artjon Shkurtaj, the former operations officer for the U.N. Development Program in North Korea, had sought whistleblower protection from the United Nations, claiming he lost his job after making serious allegations about the agency's financial transactions in the communist country.

The UNDP has disputed Shkurtaj's claim that he was subject to retaliation, with spokesman David Morrison saying last month that the anti-poverty agency "found it to be without basis."

The head of the U.N. Ethics Office, Robert Benson, said in the confidential letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press, however, that his review of the case had turned up enough initial evidence of possible retaliation to warrant a further investigation.

In the letter, which was dated Friday and addressed to UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis, he urged the agency to reconsider its decision to look into the case, saying it "would be in the best interests of the United Nations and UNDP to do so." Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan signed the U.N.'s first whistleblower protection policy on Dec. 20, 2005. It states that all U.N. employees are required to report any breach of the organization's rules and regulations and explicitly protects them from retaliation.

Because it is its own entity with its own governing board, however, the UNDP does not fall under the jurisdiction of the U.N. Ethics Office and, therefore, cannot be investigated by the office unless it so requests.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had also received the letter and had been unaware there was a jurisdictional issue with regard to the case.

"There is no doubt that the secretary-general is going to discuss ways of filling (this gap)," she told reporters at a news briefing. "Any credible evidence that retaliation has occurred needs to be looked into and I think it will be looked into."

UNDP spokeswoman Christina LoNigro said the agency stands by its findings that there was no evidence to support a claim of retaliation in the case. But she said UNDP would support an external review into the agency's now-defunct North Korea program to clear up "a lot of issues we would like to reach closure on," including the retaliation allegation.

"This letter (by the U.N. Ethics Office) does not assume any wrongdoing in this case and suggests that the issue be further investigated. UNDP agrees and is proceeding to arrange an additional and complimentary external review," she said. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Shkurtaj said he went to the former U.N. management chief and the U.S. government after his bosses at UNDP failed to act on his concerns about the agency's financial transactions in North Korea. When he asked what to do with counterfeit U.S. dollars he found in the office safe on his first day in Pyongyang in November 2004, Shkurtaj said he never got a response. And he said when he complained that paying all North Korean salaries and program expenses in hard currency instead of local currency was against U.N. rules, he said he was told "not to rock the boat."

Two U.S. lawmakers — Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, have sent letters to Ban urging him to intervene and ensure that Shkurtaj is not punished for raising concerns about U.N. operations in North Korea.

UNDP's North Korea office came under scrutiny earlier this year when the United States made allegations that the agency had funneled millions of dollars to Kim Jong Il's regime with little assurance that he used the money to help his people instead of diverting it to "illicit purposes," including developing nuclear weapons.

In March, UNDP said U.N. and U.S. authorities were investigating how $3,500 in suspected counterfeit $100 bills ended up in a safe in the agency's North Korea office for 12 years.

An initial U.N. audit ordered by the secretary-general in response to the U.S. allegations found in June that U.N. agencies paid North Korean staff and suppliers in euros without approval and hired only government-approved staff in violation of U.N. procedures.

UNDP suspended its operations in the country on March 1 because North Korea failed to meet conditions set by its board following the U.S. allegations.

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Updated: 11:12 p.m. ET Aug 15, 2007 US consular staff in London, ­Mexico City and New Delhi have stepped in to help with a ­crisis in issuing US passports that some members of Congress have compared to the response to Hurricane Katrina.

People with knowledge of the situation said some of the biggest consulates overseas have been assisting in renewing passports for US residents, although not with issuing first-time passports. The London embassy alone is thought to have processed 12,000 passports for US resident citizens. Such work is normally done at centres within the US.

US officials declined to comment on the use of diplomatic resources overseas to deal with a backlog in issuing millions of passports. The delays have seen hundreds of Americans cancel trips abroad because of the failure to process their passport requests on time.

The White House has announced that it has interrupted all "non-critical" state department training within the US, instead using staff to process passports. In June, almost 3m people were awaiting passports – a figure the state department aims to reduce to 1m-1.5m by the end of the year. At present, it takes 10-12 weeks to issue a passport, compared with four to six weeks normally.

The state department has admitted it was unprepared for a surge in demand for passports sparked by new regulations requiring US ­citizens returning by air from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda to carry passports. Documents such as driver's licences or birth certificates had previously been deemed sufficient by border officials, as was a verbal declaration of US ­citizenship. The US is due, next summer, to also demand formal travel documents from travellers arriving from those countries by land and sea.

"It seems that the administration that brought us the response to Hurricane Katrina has now ruined our summer vacation," said Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York, at a hearing last month. The state department points to higher-than-expected demand. In the first three months of this year, 5.5m people requested passports, a figure that compares with the 12m requests in the whole of 2006 and 10m in 2005. The estimated total for this year is 17m. "We are looking at approximately 23m applicants in 2008 and as high as 30m by 2010," said Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, in testimony before a Senate committee in June. "For many, the passport is becoming something like some form of national ID card."

Ms Harty links this shift to the publicity campaign that alerted US citizens to the new regulations – themselves passed by Congress in response to the findings of the 9/11 Commission which concluded that: "For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons."

"Before the passage of this law, somebody like me could take a trip to the Caribbean and on the strength of my Staten Island accent and my Gold's Gym card talk my way back into America," Ms Harty said. "And you [Congress] rightly realised that wasn't the way to do business any more."

But Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Florida, said the growth of demand for passports was not a sufficient defence.

"It's outrageous, incomprehensible, unconscionable," she said. "How can we not have foreseen this problem?

Eight House Republicans have called for a boycott of next year’s Olympics in Beijing in a resolution introduced just before the congressional recess.

The resolution criticizes China’s human rights record and compares the 2008 Beijing Games to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi-era Berlin. Those Olympics showed that “the integrity of the host country is of the utmost importance so as not to stain the participating athletes or the character of the Games,” according to the resolution, which is cosponsored by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.), Joseph Pitts (Penn.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), John Doolittle (Calif.), Dan Burton (Ind.) Frank Wolf (Va.) and Christopher Smith (N.J.).

H. Res. 610 is one of three House resolutions calling for a U.S. boycott of next year’s Olympics introduced just before Congress adjourned for its August recess. The resolutions show that next year’s Beijing Games will continue to be used to leverage China on a host of issues.

All of the resolutions criticize China’s human rights record and say “immediate steps” should be taken to boycott next year’s Olympics unless the Chinese government takes certain steps on human rights, foreign policy and the Darfur conflict.

H. Res. 610 and a similar resolution cosponsored by Rohrabacher, Pitts and John Shimkus (Ill.) criticize China for contributing to human rights abuses in Sudan, North Korea and Burma. They also cite China’s own human rights record, singling out its detention of the Panchen Lama, a central figure of Tibetan Buddhism selected by the Dalai Lama.

A third resolution, introduced by Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), focuses on China’s ties to Sudan, which critics charge has provided cover for the Sudanese government to engage in genocide in Darfur.

Both the Senate and House have already approved non-binding resolutions calling on China to use its influence to end the Darfur conflict. Those resolutions mentioned the Olympics but did not call for a boycott.

Chinese embassy officials have met with members of Congress in an effort to curtail calls for boycotts. Last week, China held a party in Tiananmen Square to mark that the games are a year away, and to celebrate its hosting duties. Tiananmen Square was the site of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 forcibly put down by Chinese police and soldiers, an event mentioned by H. Res. 610.

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Aides to U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have pledged to back a request to remove the jetties off Miami Beach at 32nd Street after residents complained those boulders are responsible for beach erosion near their homes. ''She will support whatever her constituents support. They are the best witnesses of what is going on in their backyard,'' said Arthur Estopinan, Ros-Lehtinen's chief of staff, on Monday night in a meeting with about 50 residents.

His announcement drew cheers. Meanwhile, news that Miami-Dade County Commissioners on July 24 voted 12-0 to pay for an independent study of jetties drew silence and then complaints.

''The county is in the process of sending out request for proposals to universities to conduct the study,'' said Lubby Navarro, an aide to Bruno Barreiro, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Commission. Jetties are piles of boulders running parallel to the shore that capture sand drifting from north to south.

Estopinan and Navarro spoke Monday night at the meeting at Triton Towers, 2899 Collins Ave. Marilys Diaz, another Ros-Lehtinen aide, arranged a short briefing of beach renourishment efforts at the federal and local levels for the residents.

After Navarro spoke, residents demanded county officials prevent Miami-Dade's Department of Environmental Resources Management from choosing which university would conduct the study. ''DERM is part of the problem, not the solution,'' they chanted.

In 2002, Miami-Dade County coastal engineers installed the jetties. Since then, residents complained the jetties accelerated sand loss around 29th Street, one of three hot spots of erosion in Miami Beach.

According to Navarro, neither the cost of the study nor the time frame for its completion, has been determined. The news did not prevent state Rep. Luis Garcia, D-Miami Beach, a former Miami Beach City Commissioner, from calling on DERM to remove the boulders from the beach.

''Bottom line, before they put those rocks in, there was no problem,'' he said.

On other fronts, meanwhile, Ros-Lehtinen is prodding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to finish reviewing a study that analyzes whether domestic sand sources for Miami-Dade have been depleted, Diaz said.

The study could bolster Miami-Dade's efforts to import sand from the Bahamas to renourish Miami Beach in the long term, despite a nearly 20-year ban on importing foreign sand.

To date, DERM has delivered 10,000 cubic tons of sand to the 44th and 29th street areas. Another 70,000 cubic tons of sand will be transported to those areas in the next 45 days, Estopinan said.

Carlos Espinosa, the director of DERM, told The Miami Herald in June that at least 50,000 cubic yards of sand will be brought to 44th Street and an equal amount to a five-block stretch from 29th to 24th streets. The agency also intends to transfer another 50,000 to 60,000 cubic yards of sand from Lummus Park in South Beach and pump it up to 29th Street. Gustavo Tapanes, president of the Triton Towers condominium board, said his main concern was making sure there would be sand placed on the beach behind his building.

''I want more sand so that the beach is 40 to 50 feet wide like it was before,'' he said.

By Arshad Mohammed Reuters Thursday, August 9, 2007; 5:51 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday said it plans to reward Afghan provinces that combat the opium trade with more development aid in a new anti-drug strategy but analysts doubted it will make much difference anytime soon.

U.S. officials unveiled the plan as part of a new carrot-and-stick approach of giving greater financial incentives to provincial governors to fight the opium trade while stepping up efforts to eradicate poppy crops and stem the flow of drugs.

They said they plan to spend $25 million to $50 million to reward provinces that make significant progress against drugs, up from about $21 million budgeted in the current fiscal year and $6 million the previous year.

They also plan to better coordinate counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency work in Afghanistan, which is the source of about 90 percent of the world's opium and is grappling with a revived Taliban insurgency.

"We want to make sure there are greater rewards for success and greater consequences for failure," Ambassador Thomas Schweich, the acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, told reporters.

U.S. officials said the insurgency and the opium trade are increasingly intertwined in the country, which in the past 18 months has seen its bloodiest fighting since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban movement in 2001.

While praising elements of the new counter-narcotics plan, analysts said the magnitude of the drug problem in Afghanistan and the depth of corruption made it unlikely that it would make much headway.

'TOO UNSTABLE, TOO POOR'

"There are some positive ideas ... which may help to boost the effort but it's very hard for me to see in the near term that these are efforts are going to make a serious dent," said Alex Thier of the United States Institute of Peace think tank.

"It probably plays out very badly and that's simply because Afghanistan is too unstable, too poor and its officials are too corrupt," analyst Anthony Cordesman of the CSIS think tank in Washington said of the overall approach.

The $25 million to $50 million for economic development in provinces that tamp down the drug trade is only a part of the substantial U.S. budget for counternarcotics in Afghanistan.

According to figures provided by the State Department, Congress initially set aside $449.9 million for Afghanistan counter-narcotics work in the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30, and then approved another $388.2 million.

U.S. officials also plan to provide more troops to accompany Afghan forces that eradicate poppy crops and go after drug traffickers. They also will have a stepped-up public education campaign about the evils of growing poppy.

In a joint statement, the top Democrat and Republican on the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs welcomed the new emphasis on financial incentives but said the strategy needed to do more to go after major traffickers.

"What the plan lacks is the recognition that Afghanistan is approaching a crisis point, and that immediate action is required to eliminate the threat of drug kingpins and cartels allied with terrorists so we can reverse the country's steady slide into a potential failed narco-state," Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, said in the statement.

BY RUSSELL BERMAN - Staff Reporter of the Sun August 6, 2007 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/59926

WASHINGTON — A group of Republican congressmen is pushing for a crackdown on U.N. support for nongovernmental organizations with links to Al Qaeda. Led by Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee, the lawmakers last week introduced legislation that would condition American funding for the United Nations on the world body dissociating itself from groups tied to terrorism.

The effort comes amid reports that a humanitarian organization awarded "consultative status" by the U.N. Economic and Social Council, the Saudi Arabia-based International Islamic Relief Organization, has separately been designated by the Treasury Department and the United Nations as being a front for Al Qaeda.

"The only power that we have over the United Nations is the power of the purse," Mr. Wamp said in a statement. "We do not want to send U.S. tax dollars to U. N. agencies that provide accreditation to any organization with known ties to terrorist organizations. How can one arm of the United Nations give legitimacy to an organization, and yet another arm includes it on a watch list of groups known to have ties to Al Qaeda?"

Fox News first reported Mr. Wamp's bill last week. Lawmakers began their summer recess over the weekend, but a spokeswoman for the congressman said they would take it up when they return in September. A top Treasury Department official told the network that it had placed two of the IIRO's branches on a sanction list for "facilitating fund-raising for Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups." The official said the group had diverted money to a Qaeda branch in the Philippines headed by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law.

The U.N. NGO committee is reviewing the matter, Fox News reported. Four other Republican lawmakers are co-sponsoring the legislation, including the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, and the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.

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