By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/doss5boot101609.html
UNITED NATIONS, October 16 -- The UN's envoy to the Congo Alan Doss declined comment Friday on his leaked e-mail asking that the UN Development Program show him "leeway" and give a job to his daughter, and on allegations by UN staff in the Congo that he brought his cook from his previous assignment in Liberia to Kinshasa as a UN engineer.
The nepotism scandal broken in July, when Inner City Press obtained and published the e-mail which openly asked that the UN's rules be bent or broken to hire Doss' daugther Rebecca. Click here for that.
Friday in front of the Security Council, after relegating questions about his own conduct to the tail end of a stakeout question and answer session with the Press -- we follow his logic and will report on the Lord's Resistance Army and Kivus elsewhere -- Doss claimed that the e-mail line was taken out of context. But Inner City Press published the entire email.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, those his deputy spokesperson, said he was concerned and expected to receive a report, when he returned to New York. That was two months ago. Now Doss says he won't comment until the report, half down by UNDP itself, is finished. Thus it is at the UN, several observers have opined, there is no accountability, internal investigations are just a way to bury problems.
Similarly, when Inner City Press asked Doss about the letter by the head of the MONUC national staff union in the Congo to Ban Ki-moon about problems at MONUC, including his being barred from MONUC premises and threats against his life, all Doss responded was, that too is under investigation. There is a pattern here.
Doss' answer on the allegation, by UN staff in the Congo, that he brought his cook from Liberia to the Congo was that he didn't bring anyone from Liberia "under false pretenses." But what does this mean? That he told someone, even sotto voce, that this was a cook?
Inner City Press asked the UN to confirm or deny this more than two weeks ago. A spokesperson for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations told Inner City Press she sought a response from Doss' MONUC office, repeatedly, but couldn't get one. Friday at the stakeout Doss asserted that MONUC had in fact answered: he did not bring anyone under false pretenses. What does that mean? Watch this site.
