A United Nations agency has supplied computers and technology to Iran and North Korea. Two U.N. agencies are involved, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), of which the U.S. is a member, and UN Development Program (UNDP), which has already been documented as aiding rogue regimes. Both Iran and North Korea are under U.S. and U.N. sanctions. Note in the Fox article below, that the sanctions “run-around” happened out of the organization’s Beijing office (both Russia and China have refused to cooperate with the full slate of sanctions required to stop Iran’s nuclear program).
United Nations
The broadening inquiry raises new concerns about the ways in which U.N. agencies have managed to sidestep restrictions that the world body expects the rest of the world to obey in halting the spread of sensitive technologies to nuclear-ambitious pariah regimes.
It also calls into question how much U.N. member states know about the activities of agencies they supposedly approve and supervise.
The State Department probe came in the wake of Fox News revelations in April about the actions by WIPO in sending such sensitive equipment to North Korea by a complicated method that seemed designed to bypass U.N. Security Council sanctions against the country.
The shipments took place in late 2011 or early 2012, and were financed through the Beijing offices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The WIPO actions also violated the sweeping restrictions of the equipment manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard, which forbids any HP equipment from being sent to such regimes.
The U.S. is a member of WIPO, yet apparently knew little or nothing about the controversial delivery of computers and sophisticated services. And within a month, the State Department discovered the problem went beyond North Korea, Â a spokesman said in response to questions from Fox News.
Geneva-based WIPO has a mandate from members to help developing countries modernize their patent offices. Iran and North Korea, both subjects of international trade embargoes including Security Council resolutions, were both beneficiaries of “standard information-technology equipment†after meeting WIPO’s needs-assessment and validation procedures, according to Edward Kwakwa, legal counsel at the organization.
“These programs did not include the type of technology or training prohibited by the UN Security Council resolutions for the said countries,†he said in an e-mailed statement.
If you believe that last statement above, I have bridge in the Everglades I’d like to talk to you about. Now facing a probe, the UNDP recently announced steps to release their internal audits, in an effort to be “transparent,” and ‘accountable,’ but not until after the end of 2012.
Bill Gates
If you have the big bucks, you can buy a UN high-ranking official to do…something for you, if you pay his/her salary, and the UN General Assembly is not consulted. Your own personal high-ranking official continues to have full diplomatic immunity. That appears to be what Bill Gates has done, and note that the person he is funding is an “Assistant Secretary-General,” working out of the office of UN Secretary-eneral Ban Ki-Moon.
The Gates Foundation (Bill Gates – Microsoft), for the first time in UN history, is privately funding a UN Assistant Secretary-General, who has full diplomatic immunity.  No doubt taking a clue from Barack Obama on how to work-around Congress – only in this case, how to work-around the UN General Assembly, the subterfuge out of the UN rages on. Read the story at visit UNDP Watch
Note to the U.S. Congress: Get us out of the U.N. and get the U.N. out of the U.S.
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