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Trump to U.N. renovators: You should be fired

Posted on: Thursday, 21 July 2005, 19:46 CDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reality television star Donald Trump told the U.S. Senate on Thursday the United Nations should be fired over its handling of a $1.2 billion plan to renovate the world body's New York headquarters.

Trump, a New York real estate magnate who surrounds himself with aspiring young executives on his NBC show "The Apprentice" and then fires one a week, predicted the renovation would run far over budget because U.N. managers were incompetent.

He insisted he could do the job for half the U.N. estimate, but then admitted he had no plans to bid for the job.

"If you don't know what you are doing it can be fraught with cost overruns, et cetera, et cetera," he told a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee looking into the project, known as the U.N. Capital Master Plan.

The U.S. Congress has agreed to loan the United Nations the $1.2 billion at a 5.54 percent interest rate, to be repaid over 30 years. But some lawmakers have had second thoughts over mismanagement of the $67 billion oil-for-food plan for Iraq.

However, Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington had been keeping a close eye on the renovation project for the past several years to ensure it was well planned and did not waste any U.S. taxpayer funds.

The United States pays 22 percent of the U.N. operating budget, amounting to annual dues of about a quarter of a billion dollars.

"We need to ensure that the project is carried out in a cost-effective and transparent manner. I believe this has been the case to date, and I assure you we will remain vigilant in our oversight," she said.

The 1952 landmark skyscraper on New York's East River is one of New York's most popular tourist attractions but is riddled with asbestos, lacks fire detectors or a sprinkler system and has regular roof leaks.

The building is "egregiously in violation of any reasonable level of safety and efficiency," said Christopher Burnham, an American and the new U.N. management chief. "It is unsafe for employees of the U.N., the more than 1,200 Americans who work there, members of the General Assembly, and potentially for the city (of New York)."

Source: REUTERS

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