Transatlantic Zeppelin

« In bed with 25 new friends | Main | My donation to the Democrats and tsunami victims »

January 18, 2005

Someone in Turtle Bay has a brain

There is an encouraging article in the Financial Times today discussing the predicament the UN finds itself in following (1) overseeing the biggest fraud in history, oil-for-food, (2) punting its moral responsbility in Darfur and Rwanda, (3) resisting bringing democracy to Iraq, (4) allowing the massacre at Srebrenica... and the list goes on. The man appointed to reform the UN, Mr. Mark Malloch Brown, actually seems to get it, judging from his comments to the FT:

It was possible to see the first wave of the crisis as inspired by the US critics of the UN, but as a clearly neutral voice like Volcker starts to opine as he did in the commentary of the audit, it's a lot harder to shrug this off as a rightwing conspiracy.

The FT writes:

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mark Malloch Brown warned the UN that there could be worse to come and that its management would feel the consequences from an investigation into allegations of corruption in the "oil-for-food" programme, which the UN administered for Iraq.

"The crisis is still building," Mr Malloch Brown said. "It's very hard after [last] week's revelations to believe there isn't going to be some pretty tough stuff on management."

Reforming Turtle Bay has proven an extremely difficult job, from the fecklessness of the Security Council to the cushy low-level bureaucrats. It is encouraging, however, to see that the current UN reformer seems to understand the magnitude of disappointment with the UN. Let's see if he can make anything of it.

Posted by adrianjo at January 18, 2005 12:58 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.innogize.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/65

Comments

Post a comment