The Chicago Tribune reports on the United Nations Development Programme's operations in North Korea--since suspended--that involved the direct transfer of foreign currency to the brutal Kim Jong Il regime.

Doesn't this situation sound all too familiar?

The United Nations Development Programme office in Pyongyang, North Korea, sits in a Soviet-style compound. Like clockwork, a North Korean official wearing a standard-issue dark windbreaker and slacks would come to the door each business day.

He would take a manila envelope stuffed with cash--a healthy portion of the UN's disbursements for aid projects in the country--and leave without ever providing receipts.

According to sources at the UN, this went on for years, resulting in the transfer of up to $150 million in hard foreign currency to the Kim Jong Il government...

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Posted at 11:51 AM in United Nations by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

Holocaust denial is alive and well in some parts of the world, as evidenced by a vote last week on a U.S.-proposed UN resolution that "condemns without reservation any denial of the Holocaust."

But who is refusing to learn from the mass slaughter? Who voiced objections to the UN resolution and who opposed it? Those who do not wish to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Unsurprisingly, Iran made a strong statement against the resolution, focusing instead on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the treatment of the Palestinians. None of the Arab nations, and most Muslim countries refused to co-sponsor.

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Posted at 11:55 AM in United Nations by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

The U.S. is seeking 104 sponsors out of the 192 UN General Assembly members. Which countries step forward will say a lot about worldwide freedom and the state of anti-Semitism around the world and within the UN, where anti-Israel resolutions appear with an unusual regularity.

The United States introduced a U.N. resolution on Tuesday condemning denials of the Holocaust, weeks after Iran sponsored a meeting dominated by speakers questioning the extermination of 6 million Jews in World War Two.

Nearly 40 nations so far are sponsoring the resolution in the 192-member General Assembly, mainly in all parts of Europe, from Russia to Britain as well as Israel, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The United States and its allies hope for a vote in the General Assembly on Friday.

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Posted at 9:10 AM in United Nations by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations, said members of the Security Council had begun '��preliminary' discussions on how to respond to any test.

"We are discussing a range of things that fall within the Security Council'�s domain given that this launch would constitute a threat to international peace and security,"�� Mr Bolton said in Washington.

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Posted at 9:57 AM in United Nations, Asia by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

Unbelievably but unmistakably, U.N. Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown was injecting himself into the next American presidential election.

"He was shamelessly pandering to partisan interests," Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who has led congressional pressure for U.N. reform, told me. Malloch Brown's remarkable speech was delivered under the auspices of two left-of-center think tanks, one of them with particularly close ties to the Democratic Party.

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Posted at 11:27 AM in United Nations by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

So China and Russia are on board? If so, that's game-changing.

Aides to Rice said the deal also commits China and Russia to a long list of specific steps to punish Iran if it refuses to halt its enrichment program. Both countries have resisted sanctions for months, arguing that they could backfire.

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Posted at 10:12 AM in Middle East, United Nations by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

With Russian and Chinese support crucial to crafting a deal for Iran that also includes a threat of sanctions, Bush said that he "got a positive response" from Russian President Vladimir Putin during a conversation on Tuesday.

"We expect Russia to participate in the United Nations Security Council," Bush said he told Putin. "We'll see whether or not they agree to do that."

He was less positive about his discussion of Iran earlier Thursday with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

"They understand our strategy," Bush said. "The most positive thing about all the conversations I had is uniform agreement that the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon."

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Posted at 2:12 PM in Middle East, United Nations by Nathaniel Ward [?] | Permalink

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