미국이 마카오의 방코델타아시아 은행에서 동결된 북한정권의 비자금 중 합법자금을 해제할 용의가 있음을 비치고 있는 가운데 한 구석에선 또 다른 對北금융압박조치가 시작되었다. 미국의 유엔대표부는 최근 유엔개발기구(UNDP)가 북한에서 수천 만 달러어치의 사업을 벌이면서 규정을 위반하면서까지 북한정권에 직접 현금이 들어가도록 불법적 관리를 하고 있다고 문제를 제기하였다. UNDP의 북한담당자들은 북한의 물건공급자들에게 직접 현금을 지불하고(이는 금지되어 있다), 이 기구가 돈을 대는 사업현장을 조사하는 것도 북한당국에 의하여 금지되고 있으며, 북한공무원들을 직원으로 채용하고 있고(이것도 규정위반), 감사가 부실하다는 것이다.

미국측에선 이렇게 流用된 현금이 북한의 핵개발에도 들어갔을 수도 있다고 주장하고 있다. 이런 문제제기에 潘基文 유엔사무총장은 즉각적인 조치를 취했다. UNDP에 대해 북한에서 새로운 사업을 할 수 없도록 금지시키고, 북한의 물품공급자에게 현금을 지불하는 것도 중단시켰으며 북한사업 전반에 대해서 외부감사를 하기로 한 것이다.

이와 관련하여 공화당 계열의 연구소인 헤리티지 연구소는 지난 10년간 약50억 달러의 금품을 북한측에 제공한 한국에 대한 조사도 건의했다. 헤리티즈 보고서는 특히 5억 달러가 2000년 남북정상회담 매수에 들어간 점을 지적했다.

이재정 통일부 장관은 이런 의혹의 제기를 의식한듯 한국에서 北으로 들어간 금품이 핵개발에 전용되지 않았다고 강변했다. 2003년 국방부 산하 국방연구소는 금강산 관광을 통해서 북한으로 들어가는 돈은 김정일의 비자금화되어 무기개발에 쓰일 가능성이 높다는 보고서를 낸 바 있다. 김대중 당시 대통령이 현대그룹과 국정원을 앞세워 김정일의 해외비자금 계좌로 보내준 4억5000만 달러도 미사일이나 핵무기 개발에 쓰였을 가능성은 충분하다. 이재정 통일부 장관은 손바닥으로 하늘을 가리려 하고 있을 뿐이다.

이번 미국의 문제제기는 김정일 정권으로 흘러들어가는 현금 통로를 막겠다는 의지를 보인 것으로 풀이된다. 김정일 정권 내부에서 갈등설이 나오고 있는 것도, 2005년 9월 이후 김정일의 비자금이 경색되면서 정권을 돌리는 윤활유가 말라버렸기 때문에 마찰음이 나오고 있는 것이다.

김정일은 폭력과 돈이란 두 가지 지배수단을 갖고 있는데 돈줄이 막히면 폭력행사도 어렵게 되고 체제유지에 애를 먹는다. 김정일의 종말을 점치는 이야기가 부쩍 많이 나오고 있는 것이 심상찮다.
=================================================================

By Alexandra Olson
ASSOCIATED PRESS

6:32 p.m. January 25, 2007

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Development Program agreed Thursday not to approve new projects in North Korea until an external audit addresses U.S. allegations that the agency has funneled millions of dollars to the communist regime in violation of United Nations rules.
U.S. deputy ambassador Mark Wallace alleged Friday that the UNDP's North Korea operation had been run “in blatant violation of U.N. rules” for years. He demanded an outside audit focusing on concerns that development funds had been used by Pyongyang for “its own illicit purposes.”

The audit, announced Monday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is expected to last three months.
UNDP assistant administrator Ad Melkert said the agency also agreed to end cash payments to the North Korean government and local suppliers and to stop hiring staff recruited by Pyongyang. The United States had complained about both practices, which Melkert said would stop by March 1.

The UNDP said it will be responsible for implementing all North Korean projects, addressing U.S. complaints that authorities in the North had been responsible for carrying out certain initiatives.

The U.S. welcomed the new steps.

“We're pleased with the approach that the UNDP administrator has laid out,” acting U.S. Permanent Representative Alejandro Wolff told reporters.

North Korea said it would accept the steps, though it condemned them as an attempt to “politicize the system” of the UNDP – a stance echoed by the representatives of Russia and Cuba.

Japan, however, applauded the agreement and went a step further. It said the U.N. should stop providing aid to North Korea except for humanitarian assistance “directly delivered to the people” because Pyongyang had defied Security Council demands that it end its nuclear program.

Wolff said the Japanese argument was “compelling” and that the U.S. would consider it.

U.S. officials said the United States already withholds its contributions to the UNDP and other U.N. agencies that provide funds to North Korea.

Ban's spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said Monday the audit will initially focus on UNDP spending in North Korea and then be expanded to other U.N. agencies.

The agency said it welcomed the external audit, stressing it was committed to operating in a transparent manner.

U.S. officials said they first received indications there might be irregularities in UNDP's North Korea program last year. They raised concerns the cash might be misused, possibly for Pyongyang's nuclear program.

The U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea on Oct. 14 for conducting a nuclear test.

North Korean delegate Jang Chunsik called the U.S. allegations “nonsense,” insisting the UNDP's activities in his country had been “conducted in a transparent way.”

Wallace has made several allegations in letters to senior UNDP officials, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. He has said that UNDP's local staff is dominated by North Korean government employees who managed the agency's programs and finances in violation of UNDP rules.

The U.S. cited three other violations of U.N. rules – the government's insistence that UNDP pay cash to North Korean government suppliers, and UNDP's failure to oversee projects it funds in the country or to audit its programs.

On Monday, the agency sought to refute the allegations, insisting the North Korean program followed UNDP financial rules. UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis said there is “no justification for the extreme allegations” made by Wallace, adding that UNDP was “doing its best in very difficult circumstances.”

UNDP spokesman David Morrison said the agency has spent about $3 million annually in the last 10 years on programs in impoverished North Korea, in addition to about $600,000 in office costs, which include local salaries and supplies. The programs focus on food production, rural and environmental sector management, economic management and social sector management.

Morrison said UNDP international staff have visited nearly all their project sites in the past two years to ensure funds are being used appropriately.

The UNDP has conducted three internal audits of its North Korean program in the last eight years, the last in 2004. Another internal audit was scheduled for this year, Morrison said.

================================================


South Korea does not fund North's atomic plans: Seoul
January 26, 2007

SEOUL (Reuters) - Money from South Korea's two major economic cooperation projects with North Korea does not make its way to Pyongyang's leaders to finance their nuclear weapons program, Seoul's point man for the North said on Friday.

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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts The statement comes as the U.N. Development Programme decided on Thursday to revamp its operations in North Korea after the United States said UNDP funds may have been diverted to leader Kim Jong-il to fund his atomic ambitions.

'The most frequently raised criticism of Seoul's policy toward the North is that cash transferred to North Korea through inter-Korean cooperation projects has been diverted to the development of its nuclear weapons,' Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said in a speech with business leaders.

'However, this criticism is based on unidentified assumptions (rather) than on firm grounds,' Lee said.

South Korea's two main projects in the impoverished North -- run by an affiliate of its Hyundai Group -- are a mountain resort and an industrial park where South Korean companies use cheap North Korean labor and land to produce goods.

Seoul has said it would re-examine its aid to North Korea after Pyongyang defied international warnings and tested a nuclear device in October. The U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on the North because of the test.

Lee said Seoul would not slow its economic cooperation.

'To put it simply, economic cooperation is a short cut to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula,' he said.

U.S. officials have said the mountain resort, where North Korea receives an admissions fee from each visitor, has been a cash cow for Pyongyang's leaders.

The United States has said North Korea's demands on the UNDP, including payments in hard currency and hiring of local officials, may have led to millions of dollars being used to benefit Kim Jong-il, according to a letter obtained by Reuters.

North Korea said the U.S. charges were a smear campaign.

'The United States is kicking up another anti-DPRK (North Korea) racket over not much (in) aid funds of the UNDP from the outset of the year to meet its dirty political aims,' its KCNA news agency on Thursday quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

The UNDP said it plans to change its operations to make sure Pyongyang does not hire staff for its program and it would end cash payments to the North Korean government and local suppliers.

The UNDP's projects in North Korea, mainly training for food management and other tasks, cost about $4 million although it has spend less than that annually.

© Copyright 2007 Reuters. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Reuters or its third-party content providers. Any copying, republication, or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

-------------------------------------------------------
*Heritage Foundation Report

January 22, 2007
The UNDP North Korea Scandal: How Congress and the Bush Administration Should Respond
by Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., Brett D. Schaefer and Steven Groves
WebMemo #1318


In what seems to be an annual tradition, the United Nations is again embroiled in scandal—this time as willing dupe of the despotic tyranny in North Korea. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the North Korean government (DPRK) convinced the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to provide hard currency payments to the cash-strapped nation without even minimal safeguards or supervision. Those funds ended up in the hands of Kim Jong-Il’s regime.


In addition, the DPRK dictated hiring for UNDP personnel in the country and denied the agency the ability to supervise projects freely. When the U.S. mission to the U.N. questioned these activities, the program denied the U.S. access to internal audits and other relevant information despite America’s generous financial support and presence on the Executive Board of the UNDP.

The United States must demand an immediate, fully independent inquiry into this latest scandal. This inquiry must not be led by someone handpicked by the U.N. Secretary General or by an individual with significant ties to the United Nations. Such an investigation must be extensive, in-depth, and far-reaching, with the power to interview both current and former U.N. officials.

While smaller in scale, the UNDP North Korea scandal echoes features of the earlier Oil-for-Food scandal: a brutal dictator’s siphoning of funds earmarked for humanitarian purposes; the U.N. leadership’s willingness to appease the whims of an egotistical tyrant; the cloak of secrecy shrouding the day-to-day running of a major U.N. operation; an extraordinary lack of external oversight and auditing; seeming incompetence and mismanagement on the part of U.N. officials; and hostility toward U.S. requests for documents and information.

It is a depressingly familiar story of U.N. inefficiency and incompetence played out against the backdrop of one the biggest man-made humanitarian tragedies of our time: the repression and forced starvation of millions of innocent people by a tyrannical despot. The U.S. response, both from the Bush Administration and from Capitol Hill, should be swift and comprehensive.

Given the U.N. Security Council’s resolutions[1] and expressed concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and recent detonation of a nuclear weapon, the United States should request that the Council authorize a thorough inquiry into the possible support that the wide range of U.N. funds, programs, and activities may be providing to North Korea’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

The Latest Scandal

The Wall Street Journal revealed, in a searing exposé, a catalogue of serious management failures in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) operation in North Korea, which has allowed millions of dollars to flow to the coffers of Kim Jong-Il.[2] The Journal cites a January 16 letter from Ambassador Mark Wallace of the U.S. mission to the U.N. to the UNDP’s leadership that provides a damning indictment of the United Nations operation in Pyongyang:

[B]ecause of the actions of the DPRK government and the complicity of UNDP, at least since 1998 the UNDP DPRK program has been systematically perverted for the benefit of the Kim Jong Il regime—rather than the people of North Korea. The UNDP DPRK program has for years operated in blatant violation of UN rules, served as a steady and large source of hard currency and other resources for the DPRK government with minimal or no assurance that UNDP funds and resources are utilized for legitimate development activities.[3]

Ambassador Wallace’s letter states that “as of 1999 there were twenty-nine ongoing UNDP projects in the DPRK with a total budget of $27.86 million.”[4] The Wall Street Journal reports that “while the precise amount of hard currency supplied through UNDP isn’t known, the documents suggest it has run at least to the tens of millions of dollars since 1998 and one source says it could be upwards of $100 million.”[5]

As Ambassador Wallace notes, a number of UNDP practices in North Korea violated UNDP rules and procedures, and there were many opportunities for abuse and manipulation by Pyongyang. The U.N.’s local staff “was dominated by DPRK government employees,” and UNDP officials were “not permitted to perform site visits to many UNDP DPRK projects in violation of UNDP rules.” [6] North Korean government employees “performed financial and program managerial core functions in violation of UNDP rules,” giving them a significant degree of control over operations. In addition, Pyongyang insisted upon cash payments to local DPRK government suppliers, creating a lucrative source of foreign currency for the isolated North Korean regime, money that may have helped fund its nuclear weapons program.

While the UNDP activities were the focus of The Wall Street Journal article, U.N. support for North Korea does not stop there. Until the Journal story led to a change in policy, the UNDP reimbursed the DPRK for the travel expenses of its government representatives who attended its meetings.[7] Moreover, assuming that the DPRK treats other U.N. programs and funds operating in North Korea (such as UNICEF) in a similar way to the UNDP, unwitting U.N. financial support to the DPRK could actually be far more than that provided through the UNDP. [8]

U.S. Financing for the UNDP

U.S. funding for the U.N. Development Program is substantial. According to the UNDP, gross regular resource income through contributions by member states totaled $921 million in 2005, of which the U.S. provided $105 million. However, the bulk of UNDP financing comes through donor co-financing and resources provided by recipient country governments that are used to support projects and development programs in the recipient countries. Nearly all developed donor countries co-finance UNDP programs, and donor co-financing totaled more than $2.5 billion in 2005, of which the U.S. provided $140.8 million. Local resources totaled over $1 billion in 2005. All told, UNDP programs, activities, and other expenses spent amounted to well over $4 billion in 2005.[9]

According to the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. provided an estimated $108.9 million to the United Nations Development Program in fiscal year 2006, and the administration requested $94.5 million for fiscal year 2007.[10] This does not include additional, larger amounts regularly provided by the U.S. in co-financing support of UNDP programs.

Transparency and Accountability

The Wall Street Journal’s reporting demonstrates that the UNDP lacks the characteristics of an open and transparent organization, noting that the U.S., despite sitting on the UNDP executive board and contributing over $200 million in 2005, is given short shrift:

American officials have had to fight for even the most basic information on the UNDP’s activities in North Korea. When the U.S. Mission asked for copies of the internal audits of the North Korean operations, it was rebuffed. “Internal audit reports are important management tools for Executive Heads and, therefore, confidential,” wrote Kemal Dervis, UNDP’s head, on Jan. 5. After protests, American officials were finally permitted to review three internal audits—1999, 2001, 2004—but were not allowed to retain copies.[11]

Indeed, despite being praised as a model for reform of an international organization, the UNDP lags behind the oft-criticized U.N. Secretariat in a key area of transparency: Unlike the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), whose audits must now be shared with member states upon request, the internal audit reports of the Office of Audit and Performance Review of the UNDP are not available to the public or to member states.

Recommendations for the Administration

The Bush Administration should act immediately to ensure that resources provided to, or in coordination with, international organizations do not support repressive regimes. Washington should:

Immediately freeze U.S. contributions to the UNDP and other U.N. funds, programs, and activities operating in North Korea until those organizations comply with appropriate standards of transparency in their activities and documents. This must include granting all member states full access to UNDP audits and associated documents upon request. Most immediately, the United States should call for all internal U.N. documents relating to UNDP operations in North Korea to be made publicly available.
Suspend U.S. co-financing or voluntary funding of U.N. activities in North Korea and other repressive regimes until there is a reasonable certainty that the funds and activities do not directly or indirectly support the government.
Urge an independent Security Council-backed inquiry into U.N. activities in the DPRK, including UNICEF, World Food Program, and other U.N.-related operations. The inquiry leader should not be hand-picked by the U.N. Secretary General and should be protected from all forms of interference and manipulation by the U.N. Secretariat, UNDP leadership, and other U.N. agencies. It should be headed by an experienced investigator without any ties to the United Nations or affiliated bodies.
Demand that the UNDP suspend all funding to projects in North Korea until the independent investigation is complete. The United Nations as a whole has reportedly pumped $2 billion in total resources into North Korea since the mid-1990s.[12] The U.S. hasproposed a motion to defer UNDP programs in North Korea pending an investigation that will be considered at the UNDP executive board meeting this week. The U.S. should insist that this investigation be conducted by an independent authority and that the investigation have full access to all UNDP projects in North Korea.
Call upon South Korea to allow the independent commission of inquiry to review Seoul’s extensive unilateral provision of assistance to the DPRK. South Korea has provided approximately $5 billion in aid to Pyongyang during the past decade, including a secret $500 million payment to secure the 2000 inter-Korean summit. An independent inquiry could resolve lingering concerns over the extent and nature of South Korean largesse.
Recommendations to Congress

The role of Congress in pushing for reform of the United Nations and greater openness and transparency in the world organization is critical. An independent inquiry, backed by the U.N. Security Council, would shine a powerful spotlight on the failure of the UNDP’s operation in North Korea. But as the Oil-for-Food inquiry demonstrated, congressional hearings, oversight, and investigation are also necessary to paint a complete picture of this latest scandal.

The House and Senate investigations into Oil for Food played a pivotal role in unearthing what happened behind the scenes of the world’s largest-ever humanitarian program. The sustained pressure from Capitol Hill, as well as the threat to withhold funds, significantly helped to focus minds and open doors and dusty files at the U.N. Moreover, this effort dramatically raised the profile of U.N. reform issues. It should be a key demand of the U.S. government that any major U.N. inquiry must work with, and not against, congressional investigations into the misuse of U.S. taxpayer funds.

Conduct Hearings and Oversight. As part of its oversight of U.S. policy towards the DPRK, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs should examine whether U.N. programs operating within the DPRK—including the UNDP—are harming U.S. interests.

Specifically, the Committees should determine whether certain U.N. programs are effectively providing hard currency to the Kim Jong-Il regime, rather than for legitimate development projects and other humanitarian assistance.

The Committees should hold hearings into this matter to raise public awareness of the issues involved with funding U.N. activities in the DPRK. UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis and former UNDP chief Mark Malloch Brown should be asked to testify.
Withhold Funding. As part of their appropriations processes, the House Committee on Appropriations and the Senate Committee on Appropriations should not approve any additional funding of UNDP operations until: (1) a full independent and outside forensic audit of the UNDP’s activities and the activities of other U.N. funds and programs in the DPRK are completed; and (2) Congress is satisfied that the DPRK is not converting UNDP and other U.N. humanitarian programs’ funds for its own purposes.
Investigate. The House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations should strongly consider following their successful Oil-for-Food inquiries with in-depth investigations of and hearings into the UNDP’s operations in North Korea.
Conclusion

Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan has bequeathed yet another scandal as his legacy at the United Nations. To his credit, new Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced in the wake of The Wall Street Journal report that he would “call for an urgent, system wide and external inquiry into all activities done around the globe by the U.N. funds and programmes.”[13] The UNDP has subsequently declared that it will make payments for operations in North Korea only in local currency by March 1 and that it will “welcome an independent and external audit of our operations in North Korea [and] strongly support the secretary-general’s call to have an inquiry into the operations of the U.N.’s funds and programs world-wide...”[14]

However, these declarations must be followed by action. Indeed, Ban faces an enormous challenge in cleaning up an institution that has proven vulnerable to corruption, mismanagement, and political manipulation by repressive regimes. Never again should a brutal dictatorship be allowed to manipulate a U.N. operation that is aimed at helping some of the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable people.

To help ensure this outcome, the U.S. should press for a completely independent investigation into the North Korea scandal and demand that the “system-wide” inquiry into U.N. activities around the world apply particular scrutiny to U.N. activities in countries under U.N. sanction and in states like Sudan and Zimbabwe where there is extensive government interference in the activities of private sector charities, non-governmental organizations, and bilateral and multilateral assistance efforts.

At the same time, Congress should launch its own inquiries into the UNDP scandal, ensuring that the U.N.’s bureaucracy is held accountable to member states. Congressional oversight has proven critical in the fight to reform the United Nations, and Congress has a key role to play in getting to the heart of one of the biggest scandals in the history of the U.N.

Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., is Director of, Brett D. Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in, and Steven Groves is the Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow in, the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. The authors would like to thank Bruce Klingner, Senior Research Fellow in Asian Studies, for his advice and suggestions.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Security Council Resolution 1718, United Nations Document S/RES/1718, October 14, 2006, at daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/572/07/PDF/N0657207.pdf, and Security Council Resolution 1695, United Nations Document S/RES/1695, July 15, 2006, at daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/431/64/PDF/N0643164.pdf.

[2] Melanie Kirkpatrick, “United Nations Dictator’s Program” The Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2007.

[3] Letter from Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, United States Representative for United Nations Management and Reform, to Ad Melkert, Associate Administrator, United Nations Development Program, January 16, 2007, available at www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/011907letter.pdf.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Kirkpatrick, “United Nations Dictator’s Program.”

[6] Letter from Ambassador Mark D. Wallace.

[7] Kirkpatrick, “United Nations Dictator’s Program.”

[8] The UNICEF Plan of Action in DPR KOREA in 2007 outlined a program costing $10 million. See “UNICEF Plan of Action: DPR Korea in 2007,” UNICEF, www.unicef.org/dprk/Plan_of_Action_2007.pdf (January 22, 2007). According to Reuters:

Melkert said that UNDP as well as the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF and other agencies often had no other way of operating in the country, especially during times of famine or floods. UNICEF said it had not decided at this point to change the way it pays for its programs in North Korea. “We do pay national staff through the host government in euros. There has been no decision at this point to change that,” said Geoffrey Keele, a UNICEF spokesman.

See Irwin Arieff, “UN group, with US push, to change N. Korea funding,” Reuters, January 19, 2007, at today.reuters.com/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N19241536.

[9] “Annual Report 2006: Global partnership for development,” United Nations Development Program, June 2006, pp. 34–35, at www.undp.org/publications/annualreport2006/english-report.pdf.

[10] “Account Tables: International Organizations and Programs,” FY 2007 International Affairs (Function 150) Budget Request, Bureau of Resource Management, February 6, 2006, at www.state.gov/s/d/rm/rls/iab/2007/html/60203.htm.

[11] Kirkpatrick, “United Nations Dictator’s Program.”

[12] Figure cited in Claudia Rosett, “UN’s ‘Cash for Kim’ Scandal: Ban Should Look Next at North Korea, World Food Program,” FOXNews.com, January 22, 2007, at www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245538,00.html.

[13] U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “Statement attributable to the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General on UNDP,” United Nations, January 19, 2007, at www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=2413.

[14] Ad Melkert, “‘We Welcome an Independent Audit’”, The Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2007, at www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009559.


Recent Heritage Studies
The UNDP North Korea Scandal: How Congress and the Bush Administration Should Respond by Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., Brett D. Schaefer and Steven Groves
January 22, 2007


The United States Must Act to End Abuses by U.N. Peacekeepers by Nile Gardiner, Ph.D. and Steven Groves
January 16, 2007


Three Priorities for the New Secretary-General of the United Nations by Brett D. Schaefer
January 11, 2007



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