U.S. Bill Would Withhold UN Cash Over Oil Probe

[Barrett808]

The United States should withhold some of its U.N. contributions until the world body cooperates with congressional probes of alleged corruption in the Iraqi oil-for-food program, a group of lawmakers said on Monday.

The lawmakers are pushing legislation that would seek to compel the United Nations to turn over all oil-for-food records to congressional investigators and require U.N. program officials to waive immunity to U.S. criminal and civil laws.

"The only way we can get the U.N. to move is to condition our funding upon it," U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and one of 77 co-sponsors of the bill, told a news conference.

The measure would withhold 10 percent of U.S. contributions to the United Nations in fiscal year 2005, rising to 20 percent in 2006, unless the world body satisfied President Bush that it was cooperating with the congressional investigation.

That could affect about $40 million in 2005, double that in 2006, Flake said.

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041206/pl_nm/iraq_oil_un_dc

[Tempest]

1. You know what would be really funny?

If China pledges to pick up the slack this bill would create, using the $800 billion in U.S. dollars it has.

[toska]

2. Isn't Chalabi holding all the records?

Isn't this whole scandal coming from the records that Chalabi "found" in Iraq? The ones he won't release to the UN investigators?

[MisterP]

3. then they'll bawl that the UN's doing nothing about this or that genocide

just the way the Birchers want it

[daleo]

4. Sounds like Japan is the real big contributor to the U.N.

"The United States is the largest single donor to the United Nations' regular budget, excluding peacekeeping costs, paying 22 percent of a two-year budget pegged at $3.16 billion for 2004-2005.

Japan pays 20 percent and members of the European Union (news - web sites) collectively pay more than 35 percent."

The U.S. has been withholding fees, or threatening to for as long as I can remember. Didn't this start with Reagan? Finally Clinton managed to get the U.S. accounts update, as far as I recall. It isn't hard to tell that PNAC and the reptile wing of the Republican Party wants the U.N. to fail. They prefer the law of the jungle.

[Fenris]

5. Before Reagan, IIRC

I believe it goes back to the 60s when the conservatives thought that the UN was full of communists.