Report Details Waste Within United Nations

The snowmobiles were never used. The uniforms weren’t needed. Many of 1,400 generators never made it out of their crates.

And that was just Bosnia.

A U.N. report about internal waste, released Wednesday, comes after dozens of world leaders, including President Clinton, marked the 50th anniversary of the organization with demands for financial reform and streamlining.

“The bureaucracy has grown without pruning for many years. Procedures and structures have become too rigid, frustrating creativity and individual initiative,” Karl Paschke, the head of the U.N. internal oversight agency, said in the report, the group’s first.

The audit reviews the past 7-1/2 months since the agency was established under pressure from the United States and other nations. It found, for example, that U.N. peacekeepers in Somalia spent 2-1/2 times as much as they needed for water.

Paschke said that as a result of his oversight department, some $4 million in overpayments have been recovered or prevented and an additional $13 million in savings has been identified.