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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE

Current Events at the United Nations

Aired April 8, 2005 - 21:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you come into this organization, if you suffer from idealism, you come here. It's cured.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why this envelope is so important?

FRED ECKHARD, U.N. SPOKESMAN: But the secretary-general did not open that envelope.

NICOLE KIDMAN, ACTRESS: My contributions, however, pale in comparison to the difficult and dangerous work of so many people in this room.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ROTH, CNN ANCHOR: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan among the political elite attending Friday's funeral services for Pope John Paul II in Vatican City.

Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth. We return to the air after our absence last week. News of the pope was dominant.

At one time, Kofi Annan was dubbed the secular pope, but that moniker has faded since the United Nations and Annan have been caught in a run of bad news.

Last week the latest report on the Oil For Food case cleared Kofi Annan of personal corruption, but left open some what-did-he-know and what- did-he-do angles. So this week, Annan conducted a rare chat with the staff in the large General Assembly Hall in an effort to heal the wounds and move on.

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KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECY.-GEN.: You have no idea what a personal pain it has been for me as secretary-general and as a father, having to deal with this situation. To see the institution you have devoted your life to being hammered and attacked, in most cases unfairly, was very difficult to digest, and I can imagine what impact it had on you and on staff morale.

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ROTH: As we have described on previous shows, there is a long list of U.N. personnel issues that have left bruised feelings, and while the staff gave Annan a standing ovation, a lot of applause at the start and at the end of the session, there were more pointed questions for the U.N. chief, not on his problems but that of his management team.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN: If people come to you, Mr. Secretary-General, and inform you with documented evidence and hard facts that because they were defending the U.N. principles of professionalism, competence and integrity and were standing against corruption...

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ROTH: As they filed out from the hour-long event, many among the staff declined to appear on camera to discuss their impressions. A few did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it was a positive meeting, you know, the fact that he wanted to see us and this dialogue with us was the most important aspect of it, I think.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think there's problems in any organization, and I think we're all trying our best, and I think he's trying his best.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: What's really rare is for a U.N. staff member to speak out publicly criticizing the way business is done at the United Nations, especially in front of cameras.

After the speech, a U.N. staff union rep employed in the U.N. Human Resources Office said the Annan remarks were like a political pep rally, that Kofi Annan is too removed and protected from staff issues.

Mari Cianci, who has served at nine U.N. duty stations and four peacekeeping missions around the world, says he is being harassed at his job and expects to be punished for speaking out.

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MARIO CIANCI, U.N. STAFF MEMBER: I would like to really see that this organization changes, because I came as a very, very young professional. I have 23 years in the organization. All I have known has been the United Nations since the time I was an intern, but my idealism disappeared. I, you know -- you come into this organization with ideals -- if you suffer from idealism, you come here. It's cured very quickly.

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ROTH: The United Nations, Annan, Oil For Food, U.N. reform. These topics next, with our guests. U.N. staff member Georg Kell. He's also executive in charge of the U.N. Global Compact Office, which deals with the United Nations and private corporations. Former U.N. staff member, director of public information for the United Nations, Samir Sanbar. And U.N.-based correspondent for the "Times of London," James Bone.

Samir, from the outside now, what do you think of the current state of affairs and Kofi Annan? What is the real issue, you think?

SAMIR SANBAR, FMR. U.N. OFFICIAL: I think the real issue is that of credibility. The United Nations' main straight throughout the years was its credibility. And with all of these attacks over the last year, some of it may have been by people who don't like the United Nations, but many of it is by people who believe in the United Nations.

So that sort of erosion of credibility has created a problem for the United Nations, which I'm glad to see that they are trying to face at the moment and handle.

ROTH: And do you think that Annan has made major mistakes regarding management and is not really aware of what was brewing before the critics attacked?

SANBAR: I think one of the main shortcomings was allowing certain people to almost take over a lot of the decisions and allow for that big gap to happen between him and the staff.

Now, the secretary-general normally needs big powers to survive. He needs small powers to succeed. But he needs the staff to be able to deliver to both.

ROTH: All right. Georg, you were there at the meeting and you were one of those that was signing a petition months ago, supporting the secretary-general. Do you think the meeting was a success?

GEORG KELL, U.N. STAFF MEMBER: Yes, absolutely. It has been a real dialogue, and I think the secretary-general has brought aboard some important messages.

He basically said, you know, we are in this together. We believe in the same ideas. And it is up to us now to move forward.

ROTH: But he seems to always have these meetings after big disasters. The bombing in Baghdad, other problems. There have been only ten, I think, since 1997?

KELL: That's not quite true. There has been a real concerted effort to reach out on an ongoing basis.

It is a complex organization and the real tragedy, I believe, if you can talk of a tragedy in this context, is indeed that it is a perception issue which effects the staff. The staff reacts a lot to what the press and media says about the organization, and nobody is immune against the outside world, and that does effect, of course, staff morale.

ROTH: Well, let's talk to the press. James Bone, you've just heard what our guests have said, and I guess the real issue is, what are the countries saying, because they have the final vote on Annan. Is he safe following the Oil For Food second report by Paul Volcker?

JAMES BONE, "TIMES OF LONDON": Well, first of all, Richard, if anybody disagrees with what I say, they should go and read the report, because the world is divided in two-halves in the United Nations and outside: those people who have read the Volcker report and those people who haven't.

And it's very important to get into the detail. The second installment of the Volcker report is quite devastating for Kofi Annan. You really have to give him the benefit of the doubt multiple times in order to believe his story, and he's caught even in some situations where he was forwarding a letter from the founder of Cotecna, this is the firm that his son used to work for, to the Guyanan ambassador in relation to a contract that Cotecna was trying to keep in Guyana.

There are things like this. I think Samir is right. The real casualty of the second Volcker report is Kofi Annan's credibility. We're not sure now whether we can believe him anymore. We have the issue of shredding, where a day after the Security Council authorized an inquiry into Oil For Food, Kofi Annan's chief de cabinet ordered three years of his file shredded. We've now learned that a previous investigation into Kofi Annan's son's relationship with Cotecna, which got a U.N. contract, took a day, no more. We've now just learned that another investigation we were told was an investigation into Dilip Nair, the internal watchdog at the United Nations, also took a day.

These are not credible, and we've been lied to a lot.

ROTH: Georg?

KELL: James, I have to -- I want to make a point here that, indeed, after 15 years in the organization, working with many people in many departments, I can assure you I have not seen a single time any act of corruption.

The United Nations, by any standard, I would claim, if you were to apply the same scrutiny to other public institutions, would rank very much higher on a good performance list, there is no doubt.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan is a very decent person. Many people can testify to that. There is no doubt. There is no corruption of anything like this involved.

The incidents that have happened -- and that has been truly recognized -- oversight issues, which are corrected. But the world seems to forget now that the United Nations is quite a complex, big organization that --

BONE: Georg, have you read the report?

KELL: Yes, I have, in great detail.

BONE: Well, explain to me then how it is that Kofi Annan in multiple occasions has to be given the benefit of the doubt where other witnesses words contradict his.

For instance, Pierre Muselli (ph), former business partner of his son, Kojo, said that he had a lunch with Kojo and Kofi Annan at which they discussed Kojo and Pierre Muselli's (ph) plans to go into business in Iraq, with the father. Again, the father says that didn't happen.

KELL: Look, there are all incidents (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The secretary- general is meeting every day hundreds of people and hundreds of people are saying things that --

BONE: He met his son's employer, George Massey, he originally claimed he had not met him, and then when the Volcker Commission presented him with evidence he had indeed met him, he remembered that he met him.

ROTH: They're not very politically savvy at the United Nations, are they, Samir? And shouldn't they realize that, in effect, it always comes down to the cover up is worse than the crime, and here it is the perception, and who knows what else is out there.

SANBAR: Precisely. This is a question of perception, and I think that a few rotten apples, if you wish, have tarnished the image of a group of dedicated people, hardworking people, who are the bulk of the U.N. staff. And this is one of the problems of the staff with the secretary- general.

ROTH: And now what happens, because we could go on. The list that James mentioned, I might have missed one, but Carina Perelli, her office, the elections chief office, has now been targeted by an outside --

BONE: Richard, could I just say something about these mushrooming scandals?

ROTH: Of course.

BONE: This is all symptomatic of the crumbling of the Kofi Annan regime. He's got a year-and-a-half left of his second five-year term. He's lost his authority. Suddenly, everything is bubbling up. Everybody with a complaint is now feeling emboldened to come forward. They're no longer scared of the power structure.

KELL: James, I think under Kofi Annan, no other secretary-general has done so much for U.N. reform and opening up. It is -- the focus now on the negative stories, that all the good work is overlooked --

ROTH: But now, this week, the General Assembly, there were a lot of speeches that were rather surprisingly, so early in the game, critical of Annan's proposals. Has his troubles now effected his ability to sell the reform packages?

Speaker after speaker -- the United States said no artificial deadlines to the Security Council.

KELL: Well, that's a political decision by governments ultimately. I mean, that's far beyond what staff and perception can achieve. These are government decisions, but I can assure you from the staff side, there is only one wish most staff members have: let us move on. We have so much to do. And if you (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on Kofi Annan, we have given the opportunity to --

ROTH: Well, I can tell you the reason I say he's going to hang on, Kofi Annan's birthday, Friday, April 8, and in the "Daily News," in New York, the cosmos for this Aries Tiger -- the cosmos indicates that the beleaguered Annan could bounce back from the scandals and launch a successful U.N. relief program this year -- Samir.

SANBAR: Well, I think he can survive. But the problem is, he's got to make a double effort to regain the credibility of the United Nations and to do his best to regain his own role.

And I think part of it is his own making, but part of it is the problem of who he has selected has his team.

ROTH: Right. He's trotting out the former Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Al-Atasin (ph), Ireland's foreign minister, to try or listen to this reform report.

James -- and he's also trying to create this new whistleblower poster -- James.

BONE: Richard, the problem is that life does not stay still. The Oil For Food story is going to develop. There has been one indictment already by the United States authorities in the Oil For Food case. That witness, Samir Vincent (ph), is cooperating with the authorities. We haven't heard what he's telling them. We expect further indictments. Those people will also be under pressure to make a deal with prosecutors and tell what they know. This story is only just beginning in terms of the prosecutions, which will really be what yields the inside story.

ROTH: All right, Georg Kell, with the Global Compact.

KELL: We have so much to do. Most staff members want to move on. We feel confident, we have no time to waste, basically. We want to move on. Cooperation with the business community, partnerships, immensely important.

ROTH: Well, this is work that is getting covered over by all this other stuff, but we'll see what happens.

Samir Sanbar, we used to argue also about a more effective United Nations when you were there, in full disclosure.

And James Bone, of "Times of London," he definitely will be back.

Thank you all.

One of the more contentious issues of the U.N. reform issue we've discussed is how many countries will sit at that expanded Security Council table. China opposes Kofi Annan's call for a deadline on deciding this deadlock. It's not going to be easy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He also mentioned these two formulas, but also he talked about other formulas. Therefore, I believe that formula A and formula B are the two proposals. Both formula A and formula B, there are different views. Some support formula A and others support formula B. all U.N. members should have a certain sense of flexibility to see whether they can work out any particular formula which combines the merits of these two formulas, that could command a general consensus of all U.N. members.

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ROMEO DALLAIRE, FMR. U.N. PEACEKEEPER: 11 years later, we're remembering the dead Rwandans, but we're also witnessing another genocide ongoing and we're seeing the same actions being taken by the international community to render this body ineffective. And preventing the secretariat from advancing an order to support the regional capability that is willing to stop the slaughter of hundreds of thousands and the destruction of millions of lives in a land that is screaming for support and help.

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ROTH: He saw bloodshed in Rwanda, now he's worried about Sudan. Does it seem like 11 years? Another anniversary passes for Rwanda. So too for the U.N. man who was unable to stop it after the Security Council failed to get more involved.

Canadian Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire talking about Sudan. Dallaire recently appointed to the Canadian senate.

The United Nations did crank up the machinery for prosecuting those guilty in what some have called a genocide in another African country, Sudan.

In the Hague, boxes of documents from the special commission of inquiry into Darfur atrocities were delivered to the International Criminal Court. Darfur is the first case referred to the court by the Security Council in New York. The United States had abstained, thought it dislikes the court.

The prosecutor was in New York getting a secret list of 51 suspects named by that commission of inquiry. Kofi Annan had had it in a safe and didn't peak. Government officials, militia leaders and rebels in Sudan are said to be on it. Annan will be is Oslo Monday hosting a donor's contributing conference for Darfur.

The prosecutor is ready to go to work.

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LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO, PROSECUTOR, INTL. CRIMINAL COURT: My duty in this common task is to investigate the crimes and to respect the interests of the victims.

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ROTH: The United Nations human rights investigator on Sudan called Darfur a time bomb on Friday, demanding the government crackdown on militias still targeting civilians.

Back in Rwanda, the president, Paul Kagame, said Rwandans should look to the values of the late Pope John Paul II. Most of Rwanda's 8 million people are Catholic.

General Dallaire, who saw the murders start in '94, said at the United Nations the brains behind the machete massacres are living free in Europe while their lackeys are facing trial in Arutia (ph).

One of the survivors is now a United Nations employee. Imacalee Ili Vagisa (ph). Her brother warned the family trouble could happen. He was later killed. She ended up hiding in a tiny bathroom. Eight women in all for three months.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody was dead, including my parents, my brothers, my grandparents, my uncles, my neighbors and my schoolmates. It was the beginning of a big struggle, to try to find out what do I do with this life, but every day something was inside like God's voice, telling me, if you want, you can choose to break down and die or you can choose to live and love with all of your heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNAN: You should be careful not to accept everything you read in the press as a fact, although sometimes they have very good information and useful tips.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Kofi Annan, blaming certain elements of the mass media for the predicament of the United Nations.

A few months ago his problems provided an undercurrent of anxiety at the annual U.N. Correspondents Association Dinner, which includes some toasts between diplomats and reporters.

I was asked to be the master of ceremonies. DIPLOMATIC LICENSE is your TV ticket to the event.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH: A couple of people couldn't make it here: William Sapphire, Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs expressed their regrets they couldn't attend. They're helping the United Nations plan for that big renovation you've heard about next year, so they're helping plan the move to temporary headquarters on Alcatraz Island. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're also here this evening to honor Hans Blix, Lakhdar Brahimi and Nicole Kidman. And some of you may ask what they all have in common. In fact, I've already been asked that. It's a good question.

In some ways, I think perhaps what it is is that the three of them represent the three paths not taken in Iraq. Lakhdar with his diplomacy, Hans with disarmament, and Nicole as a symbol of global popular opinion.

But in the end, they were all invited here because we wish to salute them for the unstinting work they have done for the greater good of humanity, and we thank them for that.

HANS BLIX, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I think that I've always had rather good relations with the media. I try to be as open as I can, and in some ways the inspectors and media do the same thing. They look at the reality, they try to report it.

ROTH: Also with us is someone voted one of the 50 sexiest people in the world, Hans Blix, the Swedish sensation. He was voted most disarming star of 1987 by "Nonproliferation Monthly," and he'll be looking for weapons of mass destruction under your desserts.

BLIX: After all that has been said about my sex appeal, I think you will be interested to here, I had a message from my wife of 42 years marriage, and it simply read "kiss," which of course means "keep it short, stupid."

ANNAN: In the past few years, you, Hans, have given a completely new meaning to the term WMDs. As we all know, the initials stand for nothing other than "world's most dangerous" Swede.

ROTH: Also here, Lakhdar Brahimi. He has been employed in all 8,347 positions in the United Nations.

LAKHDAR BRAHIMI, SPECIAL ADVISER TO KOFI ANNAN: Thank you very much, Richard.

You know, Tony Jenkins asked what diplomats and journalists had in common. I suggest that what we have in common is a common attitude to conspiracy theories.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tonight, we want to say to you, Nicole Kidman, thanks for being a marvelous, beautiful citizen of the world.

KIDMAN: I am so honored to have you present me with this award. My contributions, however, pale in comparison to the difficult and dangerous work of so many people in this room, and I wish I could have been there to thank you all in person. So, hopefully, another time. There's many years ahead. Bye.

ROTH: Nicole, come back.

TONY JENKINS, U.N. CORRESPONDENTS ASSOC.: I mean, who could imagine that one of the closest colleagues of one of the most important statesmen in the world would be accused of involvement in a scheme to defraud billions of dollars? But then, let's not talk about the Enron scandal tonight.

Secretary-General, as you know, we are supposed to roast you tonight, but I dare say that you already feel that some of my colleagues have already done you to a crisp this week. This past week we must have felt like absolutely Murdock (ph) -- I'm sorry, I mean murder.

ANNAN: Please bear with me tonight. Let me say that tonight I have resigned myself to having a good time. See you in a year, or three, if you are so gracious to invite me back after I have retired. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH: That event, early December.

The other day, Kofi Annan told me "Hell, no," when I asked him about resignation talk following Oil For Food and staff turmoil.

The United Nations may be seen in a different light in a few weeks thanks to Nicole Kidman, whose film "The Interpreter," show in the United Nations, makes its debut. Murder attempts in the General Assembly, that's part of the reform efforts.

That's DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth, in New York. Thanks for watching.

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