Date: 2005-06-17
Speaker: GINNY BROWN-WAITE (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Flor

ida. Mr. Speaker. it is time for America to wake up. The United Nations is a mess. riddled with scandals. In fact. the U.N. itself is a scandal. The OilforFood scheme and the sex trafficking by U.N. officials in Bosnia and the Congo are only two in a long list of egregious acts. The OilforFood program began as a humanitarian plan to soften the sanctions against Saddam Husseins Iraq. The U.N. would allow Iraq to sell a predetermined amount of oil each year. provided that the Iraqi government used the profits to buy food. medicine and other necessities for its citizens. Instead. Saddam and his cronies twisted this program. These villains got rich while the people of Iraq suffered. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annans own son benefited from the OilforFood program. Only after extreme international pressure did Secretary Annan appoint former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to investigate the scandal ridden program. Volckers report found grave conflicts of interest in the program. The real question is. should the U.N. be above the law? It is blatantly obvious that the U.N. considers itself above the law of nations and answers to absolutely no one. .Secretary Annan has said that he will waive diplomatic immunity for any U.N. official who has done wrong. However. his promise carrieslittle meaning. because which government would prosecute the guilty U.N. officials? The officials are not U.S. citizens. their offenses did not take place on U.S. soil and none of the documents in question were required to follow U.S. law. There is no vote for .U.N. leaders and no international referendum on its policies. The U.N. sets its own shabby standards for conduct. These are some of the very reasons why so many of our constituents oppose U.S. membership in the U.N.. and it is why many fear U.N. efforts to have the power to tax. field an army or create a court system. Possessing these powers would transform the U.N. into a global governing body. America must draw a line. The United States provides large sums of money to the U.N. so that "business as usual" can continue. America must no longer blindly follow every policy. scheme. international conference and peacekeeping mission that the U.N. peddles. The United Nations greatest fear is that average Americans will no longer tolerate these international scandals and demand that America withdraw from the international organization. If this ever occurred. the U.N.s thin veil of relevance would be completely ripped away. Let us face it. the U.N. has failed. It has failed in its mission to promote world peace. While the U.N. claims to provide a forum where nations can air their differences and avoid the battlefield. more dictators have terrorized nations and more generations have been lost to genocide. Instead of removing threats to peace. the U.N. has encouraged. actually .even nurtured. regimes that wage violence on their neighbors and oppress and torture their own people. Instead of a peaceful. prosperous.. stable trading partner. the U.N. condones brutal. murdering dictatorships that starve and torture their own people. while oncegreat powers tremble and use diplomatic doubletalk to ignore their responsibilities. Most of these international thugs have two things "in common: Each has a voice and a vote in the United Nations. The United Nations has come under the control of outlaw nations and selfserving special interest groups. Each promotes an agenda to line their pockets with the worlds wealth as they dinminish the power of the United States and enslave the citizens of their Third World countries. How else could terrorist states like Libya and Syria have served on the U.N.s Human Rights Commission. while Israel is condemned time after time? Why else would the U.N. refuse membership to a prosperous Nation like Taiwan. and give vicious brutes like Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe a prominent voice at U.N. conferences? The U.N. scandals are not isolated incidents. The scandals are ingrained in the very structure of the United Nations. The idea that a U.N. Secretary -General can act as a global representative or that the U.N. staff can function as an honest and effective international servant is preposterous. While the time has come for America to wake up. it is also time for Congress to act. That is why just today we approved the United Nations Reform Act of 2005. Now it is up to the U.S. Senate to follow our lead and demand reforms. I applaud the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman HYDE) for his hard work to finally bring accountability and integrity to the U.N. However. reform in the United Nations has been long overdue and action must come soon. Secretary Annans task is clear: Bring in the era of integrity and accountability you were charged with. or you will lose the United Nations single largest contributor. the United States.