Bogotà, 5 dicembre 2009
Las memorias de Clara Petacci, la concubina favorita de Mussolini, revelan que este era tan antijudío como Hitler y que tenía una voracidad sexual mayor que la de Berlusconi.
En días pasados Patrizia D’Addario, la prostituta de lujo que escandalizó a Italia al revelar sus noches de pasión con Silvio Berlusconi, publicó su libro Disfrute, Primer Ministro. Allí asegura haber quedado estupefacta ante el insaciable apetito sexual de Il Cavaliere, capaz de pasar una noche con 20 mujeres dedicadas a satisfacerlo.
Pero Berlusconi no es el primer gobernante italiano tan obsesionado por el género femenino como por el poder. Lo ha recordado el diario íntimo de Clara Petacci, la inseparable compañera de Benito Mussolini, que acaba de salir a la luz. Algunos biógrafos calculan que sin tener la presencia de un don Juan, calvo, bajo de estatura y con una higiene personal dudosa, por la cama de Il Duce habrían pasado 5.000 mujeres: al menos una distinta cada noche, durante la mayor parte de su vida. Y es la preferida de sus amantes quien confirma tal poder de seducción a casi 65 años de su muerte.
Mauro Suttora, periodista del conglomerado italiano de medios Rizzoli Corriere della Sera editó los documentos que la mujer escribió entre 1932 y 1938 bajo el título ‘Mussolini secreto’, en 521 páginas que incluyen detalles explícitos de sus faenas de alcoba, sus fantasías eróticas y hasta reflexiones políticas de Mussolini sobre Hitler y la raza, que lo develan como un enemigo despiadado de los judíos.
El camino del diario ha sido largo: quizá presintiendo su final, Petacci le encomendó sus apuntes a su amiga la condesa Rina Cervis, quien los enterró en el jardín de su casa hasta cuando en 1950 fueron descubiertos por las autoridades. Suttora explicó a SEMANA que “su único heredero, Ferdinando Petacci, había estado pidiendo que se los entregaran, pero fueron secreto de Estado durante 70 años”. Ese es el plazo que, según las reglas italianas, se debe cumplir para hacer públicos documentos de importancia para la seguridad nacional. Por eso sólo recientemente se desclasificó la información.
“Clara quiso guardar copias de las cartas que le enviaba a Mussolini desde cuando lo conoció en 1932”, agrega Suttora. Cuando ese primer encuentro tuvo lugar, ella, hija del médico personal del Papa Pío XI, tenía 20 años, y Mussolini 49 y un matrimonio con cinco hijos. La joven siempre había sentido un gran respeto hacia el hombre que desde 1922 gobernaba Italia, y una tarde, durante un paseo con sus padres, su carro se cruzó con el Alfa Romeo del dictador. Ella lo reconoció y sacó la cabeza por la ventana mientras gritaba “Il Duce, Il Duce”. Ante tal prueba de devoción, Mussolini detuvo su auto para conversar con su admiradora. Al parecer, durante algunos años mantuvieron una relación platónica, tiempo en el cual ella se casó y se separó, hasta cuando se hicieron amantes en 1936. Desde entonces Claretta, como le decían cariñosamente, tuvo derecho a escoltas y a una habitación en el Palazzo Venezia, su sede oficial.
La Petacci transcribía en forma maniática cada conversación con su Ben, como lo llamaba en la intimidad, al punto de que en un solo año llenó más de 1.800 páginas de su diario. “Soy esclavo de tu carne. Siento un deseo febril por tu cuerpecito delicioso que me quiero comer entero a besos. Y tú tienes que adorar mi cuerpo, tu gigante”, registró ella una de las frases del mandatario.
Aunque Clara respetaba a Rachele, la esposa de Mussolini, no soportaba la idea de que él tuviera más mujeres. Lo celaba tanto, que en 1938, un año muy agitado para la política europea porque Hitler anexó Austria, y en el que se firmó el acuerdo de Munich que entregaba a la Alemania nazi parte de Checoslovaquia, a Il Duce le tocaba en promedio reportarse cada hora a su amante para comprobar que no estaba con otra. Sobraban motivos para dudar de la fidelidad del hombre.
El mismo Mussolini le confesó a ella que la idea de tener una sola conquista le parecía “inconcebible... Hubo una época en la que tuve 14 mujeres, y me acostaba con tres o cuatro cada noche, una tras otra...eso te dará una idea de mi sexualidad”. Además, en una especie de clase le explicó que “el orgasmo es muy bueno. Agudiza tus pensamientos, y ayuda al cerebro, lo hace fértil y brillante”. Ese apetito se habría desatado desde cuando perdió su virginidad, a los 17 años, con una prostituta, y aumentó en la cúspide del poder cuando le llovían cartas de damas ofreciéndosele. Como explicó al diario británico The Independent Nicholas Farrell, autor de Mussolini: A new life, hacía sus jugadas “a espaldas de Claretta”. El personal de seguridad clasificaba las misivas en mujeres conocidas o desconocidas. Luego el gobernante elegía entre las ‘nuevas’ las que le llamaran la atención para que se las llevaran al Palazzo como “visitantes fascistas”.
En su diario Claretta relata una de sus escenas de celos cuando lo pilló durmiendo con una ex novia llamada Alice de Fonseca Pallottelli, con quien habría tenido dos de sus hijos ilegítimos: “Está bien. Lo hice. No la había visto desde antes de Navidad. No creo que haya cometido un crimen. Sólo estuve 12 minutos con ella”, fue la manera de disculparse de Mussolini. “24 minutos”, lo corrigió ella. “Bien, 24, fue algo rápido. ¿A quién le importa? después de 17 años no hay nada de entusiasmo, es como cuando me acuesto con mi esposa”, concluyó él. En otra oportunidad le juró que nunca había amado a Romilda Ruspi, con quien habría tenido otro hijo: “Sólo fue algo físico, pura atracción sexual. Tenía relaciones con otras en frente de ella”. También le afirmó que durante un fin de semana en la playa la princesa María José de Bélgica, quien llegaría a ser reina de Italia y opositora del fascismo, se le insinuó, pero no pudo seducirlo. “Yo era como de palo. Ni un pelo de mi cuerpo estaba erecto... la encontré repulsiva”.
Sin embargo, el documento no sólo está causando polémica por su contenido sexual, sino porque acaba con la percepción popular de que Mussolini era un títere de Hitler que aprobó leyes contra los judíos por complacerlo. “He sido racista desde 1921. No sé por qué creen que soy un simple imitador de Hitler. Los italianos tendrían que tener más sentido de la raza, para no crear mestizos, que van a estropear nuestra belleza”, son palabras que Claretta pone en su boca, por los días en que salió el Manifiesto della razza, sobre la superioridad de la etnia itálica. Sin embargo, Mussolini reconocía que el líder nazi le agradaba: “Es una persona muy emocional. Cuando me vio hubo lágrimas en sus ojos”. Con el que no le iba muy bien era con Pío XI: “Si siguen así los del Vaticano, voy a romper relaciones con ellos. Prohibí los matrimonios mixtos y ahora el Papa me pide casar a un italiano con una negra”.
A los judíos se refería como “cerdos”, “reptiles”, “carroña”, y dijo que “habría que exterminarlos a todos. Voy a organizar una masacre”. También habló de “confinarlos en una pequeña isla”.
La que no está nada contenta con estas revelaciones es la nieta del fascista, la parlamentaria Alessandra Mussolini, quien ha dicho que “ni una sola palabra del diario es verdad” y que hoy Clara sería acusada de acoso. Pero, según Suttora, de lo que no se puede dudar es de “la autenticidad de los diarios, que fue certificada por el archivo estatal”. Por eso parece difícil controvertir que Il Duce le haya dicho a su amante “nací para ti y terminaré a tu lado”, como ella escribió. Más cuando juntos fueron ejecutados y colgados por los partisanos en abril de 1945.
Semana.com ©2009.
Todos los derechos reservados.
http://www.semana.com/noticias-gente/diario-amante/132331.aspx
Showing posts with label rizzoli corriere della sera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rizzoli corriere della sera. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Iraq and the U.N.
THE LAST THING IRAQIS NEED
Newsweek, April 21, 2003
Keeping luxury hotels occupied is perhaps the main contribution of U.N. officials to the local economies they are unsuccessfully advising
by Mauro Suttora
http://www.newsweek.com/last-thing-iraqis-need-134083
Unfortunately, I am a lousy tennis player. Otherwise I would have had a great time in Sao Tome, a wonderful equatorial island off the Atlantic coast of Africa. My friend, a United Nations employee, played every day, early in the morning and at twilight, when the temperature was bearable. The tennis courts belonged to the only five-star hotel in the capital. The rest of the hot day, he retreated into the air-conditioned hotel, where he sometimes held meetings. I was the only 'normal' guest. All the others belonged to one U.N. agency or another, and I found this to be true for many of the luxury hotels in Africa. Keeping them occupied is perhaps the main contribution of U.N. officials to the local economies they are unsuccessfully advising.
I am amazed that as Saddam Hussein statues were toppled all over Iraq last week, all my fellow Europeans could talk about was the importance of U.N. rule in the country, and the danger of a long-term American occupation. They've got it backward. Wherever the United Nations goes, it tends to stay forever, and to perpetuate problems. It's been in Bosnia for eight years now, in Kosovo and East Timor for four, in the Palestinian territories since '48. In Gaza the U.N. agency running the refugee camps is the main purveyor of jobs. I am a refugee's son myself: my father fled the territories that Italy lost to Yugoslavia in 1945. After a few months all 350,000 refugees had found jobs, houses, new lives. There was no U.N. presence, which was perhaps their good fortune.
Today there is no sign that the United Nations will leave Bosnia or Kosovo. No solution for Cyprus after almost 30 years. Nevertheless, 'U.N.' has become a magic phrase, the last redoubt for pacifists. Even my paper - the largest Italian weekly, normally quiet and middle-of-the-road - has turned pacifist: for Christmas it published an article by a Catholic bishop against the war, and as counterbalance an article by a former communist against the war.
I was once a pacifist demonstrator myself, fighting the placement of U.S. nuclear cruise missiles in Sicily. But now I don't mind anybody getting rid of Saddam, by any means necessary. We Italians should know: Rome invented the word 'dictator', the first modern dictator was Italian (Adolf Hitler was a pupil of Benito Mussolini) and even Silvio Berlusconi, our current premier, has been called by his adversaries the model of the postmodern media dictator. Nevertheless, Europeans don't care anymore about dictators (or freedom). They rave about peace. They crave the United Nations.
Now, pardon my bluntness, but why should we condemn the poor Iraqis to be governed by lazy and incompetent bureaucrats? It's no secret that the United Nations has more tolerance than most for petty despots: Libya currently holds the presidency of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The U.N. bureaucracy is a Gogolian monster with 65,000 employees and a budget of $2.6 billion a year. For each problem the United Nations has set up a special agency, and this week in Vienna the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - the longer the name, the more wasteful the body) is discussing how the war on drugs is going. It's a disaster, actually: halfway through a 10-year effort to eradicate drug cultivation, production has soared. Is the agency closing down because of this failure? No, it's asking for new funds.
The system is corrupt. When I give money for the hungry, I send it directly to the missionaries instead of UNICEF or the World Food Program or anyone else whose first-class air-travel budget could feed tens of thousands. UNESCO is a successful Paris job-creation program for sociologists and intellectuals, famous for overhead expenses that eat up as much as 80 percent of some programs. Officials of the Human Rights Commission have been sent home for allegedly trafficking women and young girls for prostitution in Bosnia. At the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (yearly budget: $740 million), four officials have been arrested for smuggling refugees. The U.N. apparatus has grown so much that in 1994 a new Office for Internal Oversight Services was established to keep track of everyone. It promptly hired 180 more people, at an extra cost of $18 million a year.
Has the United Nations really proved its competence in dealing with Iraq? Past experience says no: not only did the Oil-for-Food Program allow Saddam and his cronies to pocket large sums, but an audit found the program had overpaid $1 million for services. U.N. officers are well paid: six-digit tax-free salaries in dollars, plus innumerable allowances. Most of them are decent people, frustrated by their own red tape. But why on earth should they go to Baghdad? Let them play tennis elsewhere.
Suttora is U.S. bureau chief for Oggi (Rizzoli Corriere della Sera) in New York.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
Newsweek
May 26, 2003, Atlantic Edition
SECTION: LETTERS; Pg. 16
Mail Call
Mauro Suttora's April 21 piece on the U.N.'s ineptitude ignited a heated debate among readers. "A great article!" cheered one. "The U.N. has proven weak and useless," chimed another. But the U.N.'s defenders accused us of "tabloid journalism." One reader simply urged that the U.N. be rehabilitated.
The U.N. Under Attack
I was disappointed to see NEWSWEEK descend to tabloid journalism with Mauro Suttora's "The Last Thing Iraqis Need" (April 21)--a farrago of gossip, unsubstantiated assertions and outright falsehoods masquerading as reportage. Allow me to rebut the most egregious of his misstatements. He says, "Today there is no sign that the United Nations will leave Bosnia," but we have already left. The U.N. troops have been gone since 1996, and we closed down our civilian mission last year. The U.N.'s role in East Timor changed with that country's independence in 2002; we are now there only at the government's request, to assist the authorities, not supplant them. The U.N. has 9,600 employees, not 65,000; even counting every international organization in the U.N. system--including the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization--Suttora's calculation is excessive. U.N. staff do not fly first class; only the secretary-general does. Suttora twists facts to substantiate his prejudices: he even criticizes the establishment of a tough audit mechanism, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, whose effectiveness is acknowledged by the U.N.'s major contributors. The U.N. may not be perfect, but its record needs to be examined with more accuracy and integrity than in this article that is unworthy of your magazine.
Shashi Tharoor
Under Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
United Nations
New York, N.Y.
It was a pleasure reading Mauro Suttora's article on the United Nations. The fact that the U.N. is inefficient, inadequate and ineffective is, of course, not a closely guarded secret, but it is important for those who fund it, or perceive it to be a sort of savior, to be aware of this and of some of the reasons behind the U.N.'s blatant ineffectiveness.
Morris Kaner
Givatyim, Israel
What a great article! It's time someone spoke out against the United Nations with a few home truths. Anyone who follows international affairs knows that the U.N. has proved weak and useless in most cases. You can't blame America and England for not paying their U.N. dues when they are the ones invariably forced to do the work the U.N. is incapable of completing, thanks to its incompetence. The last vestige of respect was gone when the U.N. backed down, under pressure from Israel, from sending a committee to investigate the atrocities and damage caused by the Israeli invasion of refugee camps in the Palestinian territories. There may be many dedicated, well-meaning workers in the U.N., but the organization has lost its credibility as an effective operation. If Iraq is to get on its feet again, don't let it fall into the hands of the U.N.
Kaye Krieg
Inzlingen, Germany
As a Vietnamese refugee, I personally experienced the incompetence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Coming to Britain, I've seen the corrupt nepotism and cronyism of charity/voluntary organizations. There are too many bosses, no one can assert authority and there's no competition for them whatsoever. The U.N. needs to be rehabilitated.
Thong V. Lam
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England
As a U.N. official with a 25-year career in many refugee-crisis situations in the world, I'm shocked by Suttora's vicious article. He singles out some shortcomings of the U.N. and blows them out of proportion. This is a body that can be only as good as the individual entities that constitute it. Not only have I never flown first class, but my colleagues and I often work under unbearable conditions--lacking both basic amenities and physical safety. U.N. salaries are comfortable but not competitive with those in the private sector or some foreign services. "Staff assessment," equivalent to our nations' income tax, is deducted from our gross salary. We take pride in our humanitarian work and serve without political bias in accordance with the U.N. Charter. We help innocent civilians who have suffered persecution or violence to rebuild their lives. Those of us who work in the field often have to live without electricity, running water or heating. Many U.N. workers have been taken hostage, sustained injuries, even lost their lives while performing their duty. As for the UNHCR, the yearly budget cited by Suttora would hardly cover the support we offer to 21 million refugees and other similarly displaced people. The UNHCR has twice won the Nobel Peace Prize; we're proud to have repatriated millions of people, enabling them to live normal lives. Yes, there are shortcomings in the U.N. system. But the last thing the world needs is the denigration of the one international humanitarian body that gives states a forum where differences can be reconciled. What the United Nations needs is for all--individuals, states and the media--to help us best fulfill our humanitarian task. If we fail, there is no substitute.
Marion Hoffmann
Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Albania
Tirana, Albania
The United Nations' presence in Iraq is an issue that cannot be dealt with in an ironic, one-sided op-ed piece like Mauro Suttora's. It is true that the U.N. system is not run efficiently and that its peacekeeping operations have rarely managed to facilitate peace. What Europeans want is not U.N. "rule" in Iraq, as Suttora says, but its "role" in international legality. This opens up important issues that transcend the functioning of the United Nations and go to the very core of the debate on American imperialism. It's reductive to rule them out with the sarcastic comments of an Italian tabloid journalist.
Fabrizio Tassinari
Copenhagen, Denmark
© 2003 Newsweek
Newsweek, April 21, 2003
Keeping luxury hotels occupied is perhaps the main contribution of U.N. officials to the local economies they are unsuccessfully advising
by Mauro Suttora
http://www.newsweek.com/last-thing-iraqis-need-134083
Unfortunately, I am a lousy tennis player. Otherwise I would have had a great time in Sao Tome, a wonderful equatorial island off the Atlantic coast of Africa. My friend, a United Nations employee, played every day, early in the morning and at twilight, when the temperature was bearable. The tennis courts belonged to the only five-star hotel in the capital. The rest of the hot day, he retreated into the air-conditioned hotel, where he sometimes held meetings. I was the only 'normal' guest. All the others belonged to one U.N. agency or another, and I found this to be true for many of the luxury hotels in Africa. Keeping them occupied is perhaps the main contribution of U.N. officials to the local economies they are unsuccessfully advising.
I am amazed that as Saddam Hussein statues were toppled all over Iraq last week, all my fellow Europeans could talk about was the importance of U.N. rule in the country, and the danger of a long-term American occupation. They've got it backward. Wherever the United Nations goes, it tends to stay forever, and to perpetuate problems. It's been in Bosnia for eight years now, in Kosovo and East Timor for four, in the Palestinian territories since '48. In Gaza the U.N. agency running the refugee camps is the main purveyor of jobs. I am a refugee's son myself: my father fled the territories that Italy lost to Yugoslavia in 1945. After a few months all 350,000 refugees had found jobs, houses, new lives. There was no U.N. presence, which was perhaps their good fortune.
Today there is no sign that the United Nations will leave Bosnia or Kosovo. No solution for Cyprus after almost 30 years. Nevertheless, 'U.N.' has become a magic phrase, the last redoubt for pacifists. Even my paper - the largest Italian weekly, normally quiet and middle-of-the-road - has turned pacifist: for Christmas it published an article by a Catholic bishop against the war, and as counterbalance an article by a former communist against the war.
I was once a pacifist demonstrator myself, fighting the placement of U.S. nuclear cruise missiles in Sicily. But now I don't mind anybody getting rid of Saddam, by any means necessary. We Italians should know: Rome invented the word 'dictator', the first modern dictator was Italian (Adolf Hitler was a pupil of Benito Mussolini) and even Silvio Berlusconi, our current premier, has been called by his adversaries the model of the postmodern media dictator. Nevertheless, Europeans don't care anymore about dictators (or freedom). They rave about peace. They crave the United Nations.
Now, pardon my bluntness, but why should we condemn the poor Iraqis to be governed by lazy and incompetent bureaucrats? It's no secret that the United Nations has more tolerance than most for petty despots: Libya currently holds the presidency of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The U.N. bureaucracy is a Gogolian monster with 65,000 employees and a budget of $2.6 billion a year. For each problem the United Nations has set up a special agency, and this week in Vienna the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - the longer the name, the more wasteful the body) is discussing how the war on drugs is going. It's a disaster, actually: halfway through a 10-year effort to eradicate drug cultivation, production has soared. Is the agency closing down because of this failure? No, it's asking for new funds.
The system is corrupt. When I give money for the hungry, I send it directly to the missionaries instead of UNICEF or the World Food Program or anyone else whose first-class air-travel budget could feed tens of thousands. UNESCO is a successful Paris job-creation program for sociologists and intellectuals, famous for overhead expenses that eat up as much as 80 percent of some programs. Officials of the Human Rights Commission have been sent home for allegedly trafficking women and young girls for prostitution in Bosnia. At the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (yearly budget: $740 million), four officials have been arrested for smuggling refugees. The U.N. apparatus has grown so much that in 1994 a new Office for Internal Oversight Services was established to keep track of everyone. It promptly hired 180 more people, at an extra cost of $18 million a year.
Has the United Nations really proved its competence in dealing with Iraq? Past experience says no: not only did the Oil-for-Food Program allow Saddam and his cronies to pocket large sums, but an audit found the program had overpaid $1 million for services. U.N. officers are well paid: six-digit tax-free salaries in dollars, plus innumerable allowances. Most of them are decent people, frustrated by their own red tape. But why on earth should they go to Baghdad? Let them play tennis elsewhere.
Suttora is U.S. bureau chief for Oggi (Rizzoli Corriere della Sera) in New York.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
Newsweek
May 26, 2003, Atlantic Edition
SECTION: LETTERS; Pg. 16
Mail Call
Mauro Suttora's April 21 piece on the U.N.'s ineptitude ignited a heated debate among readers. "A great article!" cheered one. "The U.N. has proven weak and useless," chimed another. But the U.N.'s defenders accused us of "tabloid journalism." One reader simply urged that the U.N. be rehabilitated.
The U.N. Under Attack
I was disappointed to see NEWSWEEK descend to tabloid journalism with Mauro Suttora's "The Last Thing Iraqis Need" (April 21)--a farrago of gossip, unsubstantiated assertions and outright falsehoods masquerading as reportage. Allow me to rebut the most egregious of his misstatements. He says, "Today there is no sign that the United Nations will leave Bosnia," but we have already left. The U.N. troops have been gone since 1996, and we closed down our civilian mission last year. The U.N.'s role in East Timor changed with that country's independence in 2002; we are now there only at the government's request, to assist the authorities, not supplant them. The U.N. has 9,600 employees, not 65,000; even counting every international organization in the U.N. system--including the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization--Suttora's calculation is excessive. U.N. staff do not fly first class; only the secretary-general does. Suttora twists facts to substantiate his prejudices: he even criticizes the establishment of a tough audit mechanism, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, whose effectiveness is acknowledged by the U.N.'s major contributors. The U.N. may not be perfect, but its record needs to be examined with more accuracy and integrity than in this article that is unworthy of your magazine.
Shashi Tharoor
Under Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
United Nations
New York, N.Y.
It was a pleasure reading Mauro Suttora's article on the United Nations. The fact that the U.N. is inefficient, inadequate and ineffective is, of course, not a closely guarded secret, but it is important for those who fund it, or perceive it to be a sort of savior, to be aware of this and of some of the reasons behind the U.N.'s blatant ineffectiveness.
Morris Kaner
Givatyim, Israel
What a great article! It's time someone spoke out against the United Nations with a few home truths. Anyone who follows international affairs knows that the U.N. has proved weak and useless in most cases. You can't blame America and England for not paying their U.N. dues when they are the ones invariably forced to do the work the U.N. is incapable of completing, thanks to its incompetence. The last vestige of respect was gone when the U.N. backed down, under pressure from Israel, from sending a committee to investigate the atrocities and damage caused by the Israeli invasion of refugee camps in the Palestinian territories. There may be many dedicated, well-meaning workers in the U.N., but the organization has lost its credibility as an effective operation. If Iraq is to get on its feet again, don't let it fall into the hands of the U.N.
Kaye Krieg
Inzlingen, Germany
As a Vietnamese refugee, I personally experienced the incompetence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Coming to Britain, I've seen the corrupt nepotism and cronyism of charity/voluntary organizations. There are too many bosses, no one can assert authority and there's no competition for them whatsoever. The U.N. needs to be rehabilitated.
Thong V. Lam
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England
As a U.N. official with a 25-year career in many refugee-crisis situations in the world, I'm shocked by Suttora's vicious article. He singles out some shortcomings of the U.N. and blows them out of proportion. This is a body that can be only as good as the individual entities that constitute it. Not only have I never flown first class, but my colleagues and I often work under unbearable conditions--lacking both basic amenities and physical safety. U.N. salaries are comfortable but not competitive with those in the private sector or some foreign services. "Staff assessment," equivalent to our nations' income tax, is deducted from our gross salary. We take pride in our humanitarian work and serve without political bias in accordance with the U.N. Charter. We help innocent civilians who have suffered persecution or violence to rebuild their lives. Those of us who work in the field often have to live without electricity, running water or heating. Many U.N. workers have been taken hostage, sustained injuries, even lost their lives while performing their duty. As for the UNHCR, the yearly budget cited by Suttora would hardly cover the support we offer to 21 million refugees and other similarly displaced people. The UNHCR has twice won the Nobel Peace Prize; we're proud to have repatriated millions of people, enabling them to live normal lives. Yes, there are shortcomings in the U.N. system. But the last thing the world needs is the denigration of the one international humanitarian body that gives states a forum where differences can be reconciled. What the United Nations needs is for all--individuals, states and the media--to help us best fulfill our humanitarian task. If we fail, there is no substitute.
Marion Hoffmann
Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Albania
Tirana, Albania
The United Nations' presence in Iraq is an issue that cannot be dealt with in an ironic, one-sided op-ed piece like Mauro Suttora's. It is true that the U.N. system is not run efficiently and that its peacekeeping operations have rarely managed to facilitate peace. What Europeans want is not U.N. "rule" in Iraq, as Suttora says, but its "role" in international legality. This opens up important issues that transcend the functioning of the United Nations and go to the very core of the debate on American imperialism. It's reductive to rule them out with the sarcastic comments of an Italian tabloid journalist.
Fabrizio Tassinari
Copenhagen, Denmark
© 2003 Newsweek
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