The U.S. State Department has been investigating a shipment of computers and technical equipment to North Korea and Iran by way of an obscure United Nations agency, the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO]. Despite ongoing U.N. and U.S. sanctions against both governments aimed at blocking their development of nuclear weapons, WIPO sent 20 Hewlett-Packard Compaq desktop computers to Iran and more sophisticated computers and data-storage servers to North Korea in late 2011 and early 2012.
FOX News reported during the week that WIPO has “has not yet been fully open” to the inquiries, and the State Department is now “working with like-minded countries” to press WIPO’s director general, Francis Gurry, to “conduct an independent, external fact-finding exercise into past WIPO projects in countries under UNSC sanctions” presumably to discover if there are further unpleasant surprises in store, and also to “ensure future development projects are properly reviewed prior to being approved and implemented.”
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.
Elsewhere in the U.N., a Special Investigation Committee appointed by the Office of Internal Oversight Services has been probing “irregularities” within UNPASID and UNETIDA, the U.N. bodies that police and guard the earth against paranormal and extra-terrestrial threats respectively. After a nine month long investigation the committee say they will be releasing their findings to the UNSC before the end of July.
Source: FOX News
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