Without the UN food support to the people of north korea- there would have been thousands , maybe 100s of thousands of deaths.

It is the classic development dilemma- do you let innocent civilians die in a country in order to put pressure/topple a dictator?

From your response it seems your answer to that is yes.

I would disagree, but that could be my christian background speaking, rather than cool logic.

This latest scandal shows our State Department representatives at the US Mission to the United Nations have been worse than derelict in their oversight of the spending of our taxes, despite your warnings 5 years ago. They would surely have taken a much closer interest if it was their own money. In fact Congress also seems to have been incredibly lax in overseeing how State spends our money through an organisation which has been proven to be corrupt to the very top. State have been spending $5.3Bn a year on the UN with no oversight – what percentage have they spent on auditing and accounting for this money? Where are the audit reports and why are they not publicly available?

Ms Rosett you lead the pack on exposing the UN and this latest revelation just shows how right you are (and were back in 2002). How many of the other UN agencies are involved in North Korea, how much are they donating to that evil regime and why has State continued to fund them? Is the GAO involved? Please tell us who is responsible (both at the UN and State Department) so we can call for action against them. Responsible politicians and diplomats need to be held to account by us voters.

[T]he audits of this UN program have been so secret that when the U.S. government asked to see them, UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis first said no. When U.S. diplomat Mark Wallace pressed for access, the UNDP finally let U.S. officials look at the audits and take notes at UNDP headquarters — but wouldn’t give them copies.

Rumor has it the UN has adopted a new protocol whereby documents can be made public only after Sandy Berger has had a chance to review them.

Because it was their turn.

Fitness for the assignment has nothing to do with such things. Since the 1960’s, UN and its programmes (e.g., UNDP) have increasingly been governed by a kind of moral exhibitionism illustrated by the presumption of strict equality regardless of behavior. It’s not likely that this governing principle will be revised:

“NEW YORK — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was forced to drop a key reform proposal that would have merged the important U.N. departments dealing with political affairs and disarmament because of opposition from a powerful bloc of developing countries, U.N. diplomats said.”

http://www.eyeontheun.org/articles-item.asp?a=4032&id=4677