U.N. Development Agency Suspends Its Work In North Korea

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 6, 2007
Pg. 11

By Warren Hoge
UNITED NATIONS, March 5 — The United Nations Development Program announced Monday that it was suspending work in North Korea because the country had failed to meet conditions set up in response to American complaints that United Nations money was being diverted to the government of Kim Jong-il.
“We have decided to suspend our operations, and the ball is really now in the court of the D.P.R. Korean authorities,” said David Morrison, director of communications for the agency, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s official name.
The decision, which curtails 20 programs with a budget of $4.4 million, was made Friday, a day after Pak Gil-yon, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, met with Ad Melkert, the development program’s associate director, to say that his country would not agree to new conditions for assistance.
Those conditions were that the United Nations would stop furnishing payments in hard currency to the government, local vendors and individuals, and stop making in-country hirings subject to government approval.
The demands, with a March 1 deadline, were imposed by the development program’s executive board on Jan. 25 after the United States mission charged that the United Nations program had been “systematically perverted for the benefit of the Kim Jong-il regime rather than the people of North Korea.”
Mr. Morrison said there was no connection between the announcement and the beginning on Monday, at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, of two days of talks between North Korea, represented by Kim Kye-gwan, and the United States, represented by Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, on the North Korean nuclear program.
“The timing was driven by our undertaking as made explicit in the board decision of the 25th of January to only continue our operations in the D.P.R.K. if certain conditions were met by March 1, which was Thursday,” he said.
The development program also said in January that it was narrowing its program to what Mr. Morrison said were “activities designed more directly to benefit the North Korean people rather than to build capacity of the North Korean government.”
Mr. Morrison said the North Koreans responded that this action “represented a politicization of the foreign assistance process.”
He added that a decision on whether to end the work of the eight international staff members and 15 Koreans involved would be made within two or three days.
In a letter to Ambassador Pak on Friday, the program’s administrator, Kemal Dervis, said, “Should circumstances change at a later date, we would be willing to reconsider this position.”
The program’s Web site lists agricultural recovery, productivity and rural energy as developmental activities in North Korea.
Mr. Morrison said aid would continue under two other United Nations organs, the World Food Program and Unicef, the children’s agency.
In the aftermath of the American charges in January, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ordered a full external audit of United Nations operations in North Korea, beginning with the development program.
“As far as I know, this will not affect the investigation,” Michelle Montas, Mr. Ban’s spokeswoman, said Monday.
 
Back
Top