The missing 'bin' at UN

If you fire half the UN bureaucracy, he advised, you will not only cut costs but also run the organization more efficiently by jettisoning the deadwood.

A popular anecdote, which has long been in circulation in the UN system, also gave credence to the drastic remedy proposed by Helms.

A visitor, accompanying a former Secretary-General, is said to have taken a long hard look at the 39th storeyed glass house and asked how many people were working in the imposing building.

"Only half," the Secretary-General responded.

Well, the other half of that UN bureaucracy was perhaps very much in the mind of the anonymous mischief maker who was the author of an email message doing the rounds in the UN Secretariat last week.

To place it in context: at the UN´s regular noon briefing a couple of weeks ago, one of the reporters asked the Secretary-General's spokesman to confirm or deny rumours that some of Osama bin Laden's supporters were operating inside the UN building. The response was negative.

But a tongue-in-cheek email being circulated in the Secretariat last week said that UN security, after all, had discovered a four-member terrorist cell active in the basement of the building.

Of the four, three staffers detained were: Bin Sleeping, Bin Drinking and Bin Idling — all during working hours.

But UN Security unfortunately couldn't track down the fourth staffer: Bin Working.

However, they were confident that anyone who looks like Bin Working will be easy to spot inside the UN building.

The email message generated gales of laughter that helped reduce the prevailing tension in the corridors of power these days — and proved the ability of UN staffers to be able to laugh at themselves.

The UN already has taken unprecedented security measures in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The UN building has not only been protected by a security ring but also cordoned off to prevent car or truck bombs being driven into the Secretariat. The unprecedented security measures have turned the road outside the UN into a pedestrian mall — perhaps permanently.

The only thing missing are a drawbridge and a moat full of man-eating (gender-conscious?) crocodiles.

The nervousness has also extended beyond the shores of the United States and into Western Europe.

As you embark on a flight to Europe, the tension begins at the airport terminal in New York where every passenger is meticulously frisked and every piece of hand-carrying baggage thoroughly searched for knives, knitting needles and box cutters (the weapons of choice used by the hijackers in the September 11 attacks).

Minutes before you enter the aircraft, a second intensive search is on, and this time, an innocent looking razor is confiscated.

"Sorry", says the security officer, "we don't allow razor blades on our flights."

But what he doesn't warn you against is that if you are eventually forced to sport a beard, resulting from the confiscation of the razor, you can well be a victim of racial profiling these days — and taken in for questioning on the ground that you look like an "Islamic militant".

Talk of Catch-22. Either way you are a loser.

Since the terrorist attacks last month, every major international conference has been postponed, also for security reasons, beginning with the World Bank-IMF meeting in Washington in September.

The UN has been forced to postpone two key meetings: a Special Session on Children which was to have been attended by more than 140 world leaders, and the annual high-level segment of the General Assembly, both in mid-September.The Commonwealth followed suit by postponing its summit meeting, scheduled to take place in Brisbane, Australia in October.

And here in Stockholm, at a media seminar in advance of the World Food Summit in Rome in November, there is news of another cancellation.

The latest casualty is the Food Summit itself, which was to have been attended by over 100 world leaders, and now postponed for June next year.

And Sweden, one of the world's largest aid donors which has consistently met the UN target for development aid, is also momentarily rocked by threats of bio-terrorism. But mercifully, it's a hoax.

Last week, in a new global study on sustainable development, Sweden was ranked number one as the country which strikes a good balance between a healthy population and a healthy environment.

But unlike London, Berlin or Paris, the Swedish capital has remained free from unruly anti-American demonstrations — at least, so far.

In Berlin, one of the placards held by a demonstrator with a penchant for alliterations, said it succintly: "Brothers in Terror: Bush, Blair and Bin Laden".