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House Foreign Affairs Committee
U.S. House of Representatives
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Republican
CONTACT: Brad Goehner, (202) 226-8467, July 20, 2010
Alex Cruz, (202) 225-8200
http://foreignaffairs.republicans.house.gov
For IMMEDIATE Release
(WASHINGTON) – U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, commented today on a scathing report by the former UN undersecretary general of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, which concluded “There is no transparency [at the UN], there is a lack of accountability. I do not see any signs of reform in the Organization.” Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:
“The stew of corruption, mismanagement, and negligence long-plaguing the UN has reached a boiling point.
“After reading this report, it is even clearer that U.S. taxpayer dollars being shipped off to the UN will continue to be sucked into a black hole unless true reforms are enacted.
“A lack of transparency and accountability is far from the UN’s only vice, however. Its endemic anti-Israel bias and inability to stand up to the enemies of freedom and human rights are examples of how the UN has been hijacked by rogue regimes and has abandoned its founding principles.
“With U.S. unemployment at nearly 10-percent and our deficits soaring, the ocean of American taxpayer dollars flowing to such an unaccountable and broken organization is more than a waste – it is an outrage.
“We owe it to the American people to withhold funding to the UN until it gets its act together.”
Note: Ros-Lehtinen is the author of the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act (H.R. 557), which conditions U.S. funding to the UN on the implementation of concrete, structural, sweeping reforms throughout the UN system. This legislation enjoys the support of over 100 cosponsors.
