2nd April 2000

UN diplomats face "housing blackmail"

The UN community contributes a hefty $3.2 billion annually to the New York city economy generating about 30,600 jobs and yielding an additional $1.2 billion in annual earnings.

Still, some politicians have a constant gripe against the UN, primarily because of its sometime anti-Israel and anti-US stand, or because of the misconceived notion that all UN personnel are entitled to diplomatic immunity and privileges.

They are not — and some of the best things in life are certainly not duty-free.

Even successive New York city Mayors have occasionally unleashed their hatred and venom at the world body — even as the UN keeps pumping money into city coffers.

Former Mayor Ed Koch called the UN a "sewer". The current Mayor, Rudolph Giuiliani, has said he will not miss the UN if it decides to pack up and leave New York. But much of this rhetoric is political grandstanding.

The Iraqis, who have been under a rigorous UN economic and military embargo for nearly 10 years, complained last week they are now facing sanctions from New York landlords.

The Iraqi Mission to the UN said that some of its newly-appointed delegates have been forced to seek shelter in hotels because real estate agents in the UN neighbourhood are ostracising Iraqi diplomats.

Abdul Munim al-Kadhe, a diplomat attached to the Iraqi Mission to the UN, says he had to live for nine months in a hotel because he couldn't find any housing in New York city.

"There had been no explanation other than that I was from the Iraqi Mission," he told the UN Committee on Relations With the Host Country.

He said that a building manager in an apartment complex, located within walking distance of the UN, told him bluntly that the management of the building had decided not to lease any apartments to diplomats from the Iraqi Mission.

"That position was clearly contrary to the US constitution and US law," he declared.

Most real estate agencies in New York, he said, had refused to rent to diplomats in general, and Iraqi diplomats in particular.

This is a totally new development because the Iraqi mission has not encountered such problems since the country joined the UN back in December 1945.

Sri Lankan diplomats, even though they have not faced the fury of landlords, have also encountered subtle discrimination in their search for apartments.

As a way of circumventing this problem, most diplomats have either to disburse large sums of money to convince landlords to rent or sell their apartments or in the alternative agree to a waiver of diplomatic immunity as a pre-condition for renting.

While sympathising with the plight of the Iraqis in New York, Mohammad Kamal of Malaysia said that Malaysian diplomats too faced similar obstacles.

Besides high rents, he said, some building managers told him that apartments were not meant for diplomats because they were bad tenants.

Since diplomats were subject to transfers at short notice, a diplomatic clause safeguarded them from signing long-term leases.

But now, some building managers are refusing to honour this privilege long exercised by diplomats.

So if a diplomat is forced to break the lease, he now has to pay rent for the entire duration of his lease — whether or not he is in occupation of the apartment.

Vladimir Tarabrin of Russia told delegates that "housing blackmail" was unacceptable. So was the "diplomatic shield", he said was used by defaulters to protect themselves against the law.

The US as the host country had a direct obligation to render assistance to mission staff.

Hopefully, the relevant organisations in the host country would strive to meet the interests and requirements of UN diplomatic staff, he said. That included housing, a requirement for the normal functioning of diplomatic missions.

Speaking on behalf of the host country, Robert Moller of the US Mission, said that the New York city housing market was a "seller's market", and those individuals who laid down restrictions did not take orders from the US government.

Moller said he could guarantee that, if the US had violated its international obligations, action would be taken, but the housing problem was between private landlords and individual tenants.

The demand by landlords that diplomats waive their immunity, he said, had been of concern to the US as host country.