U.S. editorial excerpts -4-

Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press:

KIM'S U.N. BUDDY (The Wall Street Journal, New York)

The last time we wrote about Adrianus Petrus Wilhelmus Melkert, the Dutch politician turned international bureaucrat, he was busy disavowing his record at the World Bank in an effort to oust President Paul Wolfowitz. Mr. Melkert had run the bank board's ethics committee, which advised Mr. Wolfowitz to give the raise to his girlfriend that became the basis for the phoney accusations against him.

Now Mr. Melkert has resurfaced as an anti-American agitator in another global sinecure. As associate administrator of the United Nations Development Program, he recently threatened to ''retaliate'' against the U.S. for its efforts to get to the bottom of incompetence and possible corruption in the UNDP's program in North Korea.

The international diplomat's nasty but revealing threat occurred in a meeting this month with Mark Wallace, who is the point man at the U.S. mission to the U.N. for the continuing investigation into the Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal, in which many millions of dollars of UNDP money may have been diverted to Pyongyang. The incident was recounted in a June 14 letter to Mr. Melkert's boss, Kemal Dervis, from Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. permanent representative to the U.N.

''I was surprised and concerned to learn that . . . Mr. Melkert suggested to Ambassador Wallace that UNDP viewed [the] United States inquiry relating to [North Korea] as justifying some kind of 'retaliation' against the Government of the United States,'' Mr. Khalilzad wrote.

We believe Mr. Khalilzad, not least because in addition to being a bully, Mr. Melkert has shown he plays fast and loose with the truth. Here we refer directly to Mr. Melkert's own words, as expressed in his June 13 statement to the UNDP executive board in response to the preliminary findings by U.N. auditors confirming U.S. allegations of massive irregularities in the UNDP's operations in North Korea.

This is how Mr. Melkert characterized the report: The auditors ''found no evidence that UNDP funding was diverted to the North Korean regime. . . . They further found that UNDP operated a modest program . . . and that the organization had controls in place to determine that its funds were used for development purposes.'' That was the sum of his report -- other than to pat his organization on the back for ''changing long standing practices with regard to staffing and currency.''

In fact, as Mr. Melkert knows, the U.N. Board of Auditors found that the UNDP repeatedly violated its own rules until it pulled out of North Korea this spring. It hired staffers selected by the North Korean government and paid their salaries directly to Pyongyang; it disbursed large amounts of cash in foreign currency; and it inspected only a small fraction of its projects, which may or may not even exist. The auditors, who were barred from traveling to North Korea, were careful to note that they were unable to follow the money trail. That is, they had no way to know whether, as Mr. Melkert blithely asserts, the UNDP's funds ''were used for development purposes.''

The bottom line is that no one knows how much money the United Nations has actually spent in North Korea, or where it went. Using sums ''self-reported'' by the U.N., the Congressional Research Service says U.N. development assistance to North Korea for 1995-2005 was a staggering $1.4 billion. Of that, the UNDP spent a minimum of $33.1 million; if payments made by UNDP on behalf of other U.N. agencies are included, the total could reach more than $100 million. That's money Kim has used to prop up his brutal regime and perhaps to fund his nuclear weapons program.

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment redirecting $20 million in U.S. contributions away from the UNDP -- a reduction for which the U.N. can thank Mr. Melkert's stonewalling antics. Congress won't continue to finance an outfit whose No. 2 official is so hostile to America. (June 22)