US accused of using aid to sway votes in UN security council

Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sunday December 17, 2006
The Observer

The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists.

Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN Secretary-General, expressed his frustration at the power the US wields over the UN in his parting speech last week. In a detailed analysis of 50 years of data, Harvard University's Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker provide the clearest evidence yet that money is used by the council's richest member to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

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Anti-poverty campaigners reacted angrily to the findings. 'Aid should go to the people who need it, not as a political sweetener,' said Duncan Green of Oxfam. 'In recent years most rich countries have been making progress on this, but showering bribes on developing countries just because they sit on the UN security council is clearly a step backwards.'

Charities often complain that the US uses its aid as a political tool, and this new evidence of what the authors call 'vote-buying' will raise fears about whether the surge of aid money that was promised at last year's Gleneagles G8 summit will be fairly spent.

Ten of the 15 seats on the security council are filled for two years at a time, by rotation. Kuziemko and Werker found that, in years when they have a seat, countries get an average of more than £8m extra in foreign aid from the US.

'I don't think it's surprising this goes on; but I wonder whether countries being aware that it goes on might have some salutary effect,' Kuziemko said.

Countries with a security council seat also receive an average of £500m extra from the UN itself, most of it channelled through its children's fund, Unicef, over which the US traditionally has been able to exert control. President George Bush recently provoked controversy by appointing a close political ally, former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, as Unicef's chief.

When there is a controversial vote in prospect, the premium for countries with a security council seat is even higher. US aid surges by as much as 170 per cent, bringing in a £23m windfall, while the UN spends an extra £4m.

'Some countries serve on the security council during relatively calm years, whereas others, by chance, are fortunate enough to serve during a year in which a key resolution is debated and their vote becomes more valuable,' the authors say. They highlight controversial resolutions over issues including the Korean War, Suez, the Falklands and Kosovo - though the period they study does not include the notorious 'second resolution' over the invasion of Iraq, which never came to a vote.

David Woodward, of the New Economics Foundation, who is writing about the paper for a forthcoming edition of the Lancet, said the findings suggest the UN should be radically reformed.

'As long as one country wields such influence, there will always have a degree of control over what goes on, and they will be likely to abuse that.'

'The biggest obstacle, in both the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the UN, is that the countries that now have power can use that power to block reform - and they do.'

Documents
Volcker commission report on UN oil-for-food

Useful links
UN website
Wikipedia: Kofi Annan

Video: UN Sec. Gen. Annan declares Iraq safer under Saddam

UN Sec. Gen. Annan declares Iraq 'worse than civil war'

Kofi Annan: Situation in Iraq 'much worse' than civil war

Annan says Iraq in grip of civil war
Sun Dec 3, 2006 10:42 PM GMT

By Aseel Kami

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iraq was in the grip of civil war as U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked insurgent bases in a bid to shore up the authority of a government itself riven by factional rivalries.

In Washington, outgoing U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was revealed to have acknowledged in a memo just before he lost his job that U.S. strategy was not working and it might be better to reduce troop numbers.

President George W. Bush has repeatedly rejected recent assertions in the mainstream media that Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war. Annan's remarks, to the BBC, might add to pressure for a swift change of policy.

"When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war -- this is much worse," Annan said.

He agreed with Iraqis who said life was worse now than it was under deposed president Saddam Hussein.

"If I were an average Iraqi obviously I would make the same comparison -- that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, 'Am I going to see my child again?" Annan said.

"And the Iraqi government has not been able to bring the violence under control," he added.

In western Anbar province, two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on Saturday and three Marines died from wounds sustained from enemy action, the U.S. military said.

The Rumsfeld memo, written a day before voter dismay over Iraq cost the Republicans control of Congress, said: "It is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough."

Rumsfeld, a leading planner of the Iraq war, outlined several options but endorsed none.

Among them were reductions in U.S. forces and bases and a recasting of the U.S. goals there. He suggested cutting U.S. bases to just five from 55 by mid-2007.

MARKET ATTACK

The presence of 140,000 U.S. troops and the loss of more than 2,800 American lives in the past 3-1/2 years has failed to end bloodshed in Iraq.

Sectarian violence between Saddam's once-dominant Sunni minority and the newly empowered Shi'ite Muslim majority claimed a record 3,700 lives in October, the United Nations estimated, and the latest Iraqi data suggested civilian deaths rose by more than another 40 percent last month alone.

Fifty-one people were killed at a Baghdad market on Saturday by a triple car bomb attack, 10 days after the worst attack of the conflict killed over 200 people in the capital.

The Rumsfeld memo adds to a debate expected to gather steam when the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gives its recommendations on Wednesday. The group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, a long-time Bush family adviser, is widely expected to inform a possible shift in U.S. strategy.

RAIDS

In Iraq, U.S. troops and the Iraqi forces the Americans are counting on to take on the burden of stifling civil war, were on the offensive in Baquba, a city 60 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

Baquba has seen Sunni insurgents, including al Qaeda Islamist militants, driving out Shi'ite Muslims, while Shi'ite militias have attacked Sunnis in surrounding areas. Three rebels were killed and 44 detained in the offensive, the military said.

Annan, who has proposed an eventual international conference on Iraq, which Baghdad's leaders have rejected, said Iraqis would have to unite to bring this about but needed outside help.

"But some of the key things they have to do is the constitutional review, really looking at issues of revenue sharing - oil and taxation revenues, how do you share it fairly," he said.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald)