UN Sudan mission wasting million

Washington Post:

The United Nations has wasted tens of millions of dollars in its peacekeeping operations in Sudan over the past three years, according to the findings of U.N. auditors examining the financial practices of the global body's overseas missions.

U.N. officers in Sudan have squandered millions by renting warehouses that were never used, booking blocks of hotel rooms that were never filled, and losing thousands of food rations to theft and spoilage, according to several internal audits by the U.N. Office for International Oversight Services. One U.N. purchasing agent has been accused of steering a $589,000 contract for airport runway lights to a company that helped his wife obtain a student visa, while two senior procurement officials from the United States and New Zealand have been charged by a U.N. panel with misconduct for not complying with rules designed to prevent corruption.

The U.N. procurement division "did not have the necessary capacity and expertise to handle the large magnitude of procurement actions" in Sudan, particularly during the early phases of the mission, according to a confidential October 2006 audit obtained by The Washington Post. Investigators also detected "a number of potential fraud indicators and cases of mismanagement and waste."

The internal United Nations audits provide a rare glimpse into the messy business of assembling a massive multinational expeditionary force in a war-torn nation. They also highlight the Bush administration's struggles to make progress on its top Africa initiative: ending a decades-long civil war between Sudan's Islamic government and southern rebels, and halting the mass killing of civilians in the country's southern region of Darfur.

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The good news is that so far the UN pedophile brigades have not landed.

That the UN could be ineffective and wasteful is hardly new news, but you would think that after the oil for food debacle it would not be so blatantly bad. "This is seen as a witch hunt that is not warranted given the fluidity and complexity of that mission," a UN official whined. In response we should say to the UN that we knew the job was difficult when we gave it to you, but we we pect btter use of our money.