Pakistan Army on the Gold Standard.

Just standard operating procedures for the UN and Pakistan? Probably. Pakistan sure seems to have a hard time finding OBL in Whatchacallitstan and I am sure OBL has plenty of the gold to pass around. UN troops are notoriously second rate. I guess the rest of the story is that in Iraq, Africa and elsewhere the only real gold standard for use of force is the US Military.

UN troops traded guns for gold with militias, says report
By David Usborne in New York Independent
Published: 24 May 2007

Scandal is engulfing the United Nations once again after allegations that peacekeepers stationed in Congo traded guns for gold with militia groups that they were meant to be disarming. Meanwhile, a trial got under way in New York of a former UN official accused of taking bribes.

The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said in a statement that an investigation into the guns-for-gold claims had begun and was continuing, adding that it had a "zero-tolerance policy for misconduct and will remain vigilant in preventing egregious and unacceptable behaviour".

At the heart of the investigation are allegations that, in 2005, Pakistani soldiers sent by the UN to restore peace in Ituri province around the north-eastern mining town of Mongbwalu began returning guns to militia groups, receiving gold in exchange.

Witnesses confirmed the existence of the trade to the BBC. One Congolese officer "repeatedly saw militia who had been disarmed one day but the next day would become rearmed again. The information he could obtain was always the same, that it would be the Pakistani battalion giving arms back to the militia."

Human Rights Watch said it had its own information on the case which it had passed to the UN. "Pakistani officers were involved in illegal smuggling of between $2m-$5m in gold out of Ituri. We have very solid information on this," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher with the group.

The Congo force of almost 18,000 soldiers is the largest UN deployment in the world. It has been credited with helping the country's transition to a fragile democracy after a vicious civil war from 1998 to 2003 that killed as many as four million people and drew in forces from several neighbouring countries.

The UN has been accused of burying the initial findings of the investigation to avoid embarrassing Pakistan, the largest peacekeeping troop contributor. The UN's special representative in the DRC, William Swing, emphatically denied the guns-for-gold claims.

More here

Zimbabwe to Head UN Commision on Sustainable Devlopment

Zimbabwe, formerly the thriving African nation of Rhodesia, lately the basket case of Robert Mugabe, has been elected to head the United Nations "Commission on Sustainable Development." No, this is not an April Fools joke. Both the BBC and the Voice of America are reporting it. VOA reports that inspite of Zimbabwe's 2200 percent inflation, they were selected by a 26 to 21 secret ballot.

BBC sheds a little more light on the matter:

Developing nations appear to have voted for Zimbabwe, the BBC's Laura Trevelyan in New York says.

They respected the decision of the African group to nominate the country for the post in the first place, and they have shown they cannot be pushed around, our correspondent says.

Zimbabwe's Environment Minister Francis Nheme will now become chairman of the CSD.

Mr Nheme is the subject of European Union travel ban because he is a member of President Robert Mugabe's government.

That means he cannot travel to the EU to meet ministers on commission business.

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When I was a young man, small signs reading, "Get the US out of the UN" were nailed to trees and posts here and there around the countryside. For some reason, it was my understanding that the signs had something to do with the socially stigmatized John Birch Society. Today, I wish that I had a truckload of those signs.