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06/13/2005:

"U.S. Panel's Report Criticizes U.N. and Proposes Overhaul"

UNITED NATIONS, June 12 - A Congressionally mandated panel will report this week that the United Nations suffers from poor management, "dismal" staff morale and lack of accountability and professional ethics but will acknowledge the broad changes proposed for the organization by Secretary General Kofi Annan and urge the United States to support them.
Full: nytimes.com

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Among its recommendations, the panel says the United Nations should put in place corporate style oversight bodies and personnel standards to improve performance. It also calls on the United Nations to create a rapid reaction capability from its member states' armed forces to prevent genocide, mass killing and sustained major human rights violations before they occur.

Newt Gingrich, a Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, and George J. Mitchell, a Democratic former majority Senate leader, are co-chairmen of the bipartisan task force. It includes former diplomats, military and intelligence officials and leaders of conservative and liberal political institutes.

It was created by Congress in December to suggest measures to make the United Nations more effective and ways in which the United States can spur needed changes. The United States is the biggest donor to the United Nations, contributing 22 percent of the regular operating budget and nearly 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget.

The Task Force on the United Nations made a copy of its 174-page report available to The New York Times on Sunday. The report is scheduled to be made public in Washington on Wednesday.

The task force, in wresting a consensus from members that include some of the institution's harshest critics, ended up producing a report that notably struck a more sympathetic tone in discussing the United Nations' failures than have its vocal detractors on Capitol Hill. Members of the panel will be discussing the conclusions at a hearing in Washington on June 22.

In judging the United Nations and its lapses, the task force said it had focused on the responsibilities of the states making up the institution rather than just the institution itself.

"On stopping genocide," the report said, "too often 'the United Nations failed' should actually read 'members of the United Nations blocked or undermined action by the United Nations.' "

In a foreword to the report, Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Mitchell said they were "struck by the United Nations' own receptivity to needed reforms" but added that the changes "must be real and must be undertaken promptly."

The Gingrich-Mitchell task force is one of six investigations of the United Nations initiated in Washington and a seventh in New York. Five Congressional committees and the Justice Department are conducting inquiries into the United Nations' oil-for-food program, created to allow Iraq to sell oil to meet the needs of its civilian population. An independent panel headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, is scheduled to deliver its third and final report on the subject next month.

A number of American congressmen have called on Mr. Annan to step down because of the scandals in the oil-for-food program. Last week, Representative Henry J. Hyde, an Illinois Republican who is the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, introduced legislation that would withhold half of the United States' dues to the United Nations unless it met specified requirements for change and would turn a number of automatically funded programs into programs funded only voluntarily.

While the report noted the damage caused by the scandals, it stressed that one of the consequences was that the United Nations' top leadership realized the need to make fundamental changes. "Real change may now be possible without resorting to the stick of U.S. financial withholding," the report said.

In its only reference to Mr. Annan's term in office, it said that a "fundamental criterion" in selecting his successor when his term is completed at the end of 2006 should be "management capability."