Dollars for Durban II - Back to the U.N
Claudia Rosett
National Review Online, December 12, 2007
"… In the coming year, the planners would like to hold a series of advance meetings, jetting around the world for consultations and regional conclaves…All this takes money. But the Durban II planners, including such oil-rich regimes as Iran and Libya, are not proposing to fund it themselves. Instead, they want U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to give them a free ride by allocating to this conference and its preparations some $7.2 million — for starters — from the U.N. regular budget. Because American taxpayers finance 22 percent of the U.N. budget, that means the U.S. would effectively be picking up almost one quarter of the tab not only for Durban II itself, but for every preparatory pajama party over the next year…
On Nov. 28, this resolution, with its $7.2 million price tag, was discussed, with some oral amendments, in the Third Committee. The U.S. delegate read out a statement objecting to the resolution and urging that the Office of the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner devote more effort to genuinely fighting racism, ‘rather than put its valuable resources toward more conferences.’ Then came the vote. This Pakistan-sponsored resolution was so egregious that even the often-gutless European Union joined the U.S. and Israel in voting against it. But in the U.N.’s Third Committee, which includes the same thug majority as the General Assembly, that’s still not enough to carry the day. The delegates of North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Burma, Zimbabwe, Libya and Sudan, along with a few score others, pushed the buttons to light up the great big voting board on the wall, 119 green lights to 45 red, with six abstentions, in favor of moving Durban II along the U.N. conveyor belt toward funding from the regular budget, with its fat slice of U.S. bacon…"
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