*** 05-Aug-99 *** Title: POLITICS-UN: Peacekeepers Were Overpaid Millions By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Aug 5 (IPS) - The United Nations has written off more than 5.4 million dollars through ''overpayments'' in salary allowances to UN military observers assigned to a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East. The decision to absorb the loss - suffered by the UN Iraq- Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM) - comes at a time when the cash-strapped world body is battling an ongoing financial crisis. The United Nations said it had no choice but to write off the huge loss because the beneficiaries of the overpayments simply took the money and ran. The total overpayments made to about 150 peacekeepers in UNIKOM amounted to 6.3 million dollars, of which 86 percent went to military observers and the balance to civilian staff from the Secretariat who were seconded for service in the Iraqi-Kuwait border. As the civilians were still in the UN payroll, the Secretariat managed to recover the money due from them. But most of the military observers, who were all on loan, went back to their home countries after their tour with UNIKOM - and refused to return the excess payments. ''Only the UN staff has been asked to pay back money - because the Secretariat cannot locate the military observers who no longer are in the service of the United Nations,'' said Rosemary Waters, a former president of the UN Staff Union. ''It is grossly unfair to penalise only the Secretariat staffers for no fault of theirs,'' she added. After a series of investigations, which began in 1996, the Secretariat decided to write off the overpayments made to the military observers - amounting to about 5.4 million dollars - because declared the money non-recoverable. The only amount the Secretariat managed to recover from military observers was about 122,573 dollars. The decision to write off the overpayments still must be approved by the 185-member General Assembly later this year. The overpayments began in 1991 due to miscalculations in arrriving at a special subsistence allowances given to UN peacekeepers and civilian staff serving in overseas missions. In a report to the General Assembly released Wednesday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the Secretariat had decided ''to continue recovery only in respect of civilian staff'' and all ''recoveries from military staff would be halted.'' ''The efforts of the Secretariat to recover the overpayment have included communications to all UN permanent missions concerned (in New York) outlining the problem and requesting their assistance in facilitating the recovery in accordance with the decisions and resolutions of the General Assembly,'' Annan said. The Secretariat sent notification letters to each of the military observers who had departed from UNIKOM . In addition, the Secretariat also wrote to all UN permanent missions in New York seeking their assistance in recovering the monies. But most of the responses received challenged the recovery efforts. One of them said it was ''unfair to seek reimbursement from the officers so many years after they had served in UNIKOM and mission subsistence allowance had been paid.'' UNIKOM was established immediately after the January 1991 Gulf War to monitor a demilitarised zone (DMZ) along the boundary between Iraq and Kuwait. The total number of staffers was about 150, including military observers, civilian staff and local recruits. A report by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) revealed ''the intractable complexity'' of the subsistance allowance policy and procedures, and more importantly, the considerable potential for varying interpretations and applications. When the overpayment was discovered in 1996 the OIOS chief, Under Secretary-General Karl Paschke, said that it was not only a matter of recovering the overpayment; more important, was to make sure it will not happen again. Describing it as is one of the ''significant'' cases of overpayments by the United Nations, he admitted ''there are other cases as well'' though not necessarily on the same scale. Asked who should be responsible for the huge loss, Paschke said ''theoretically the chief financial officer of the mission has to be responsible for it, and possibly others too''. The UN's biggest single loss, however, remained the 3.9 million dollars stolen in 1993 from a compound that housed the offices of the UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia. Although Scotland Yard was called in to investigate the loss, all investigations drew a blank. (END/IPS/td/mk/99) Origin: ROMAWAS/POLITICS-UN/ ---- Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved. 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