The International Criminal Court prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has sharply criticized nations, diplomats, and political leaders that have lent legitimacy to suspected war criminals like Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir. In March, he derided international monitors who participated in a U.N.-backed vote that led to Bashir's reelection. "It's like monitoring a Hitler election," he said at the time.

But the Argentine prosecutor will send his deputy, Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, to Kigali to attend Monday's inauguration of Rwanda leader Paul Kagame, whose army has been accused in a recently leaked U.N. report of committing massive war crimes and possibly genocide in eastern Congo in the 1990s.

Moreno-Ocampo authorized the visit in the hopes of using it to press African leaders to support the court's efforts to hold Bashir and other alleged criminals accountable. "We will meet some African heads of state in Kigali and discuss how to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur," Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement to Turtle Bay. "There is no solution in Darfur without the involvement of African leaders."

But the move has drawn criticism from some of the court's most passionate defenders, who say that Bensouda's appearance sends the wrong signal to Congolese victims of alleged Rwandan crimes and to Darfuri civilians who will face dire conditions if Rwanda carries through on its threat to withdraw 3,500 U.N. peacekeepers from Darfur to protest the U.N. report.

"It's a bad decision," Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch, one of the court's leading defenders, told Turtle Bay. "This is not about guilt or innocence, which only a court could decide. It's about association and perception."

Bill Pace, a lawyer who oversees the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, an association of more than 2.500 pro-ICC NGOs, said "it's fine" for Fatou to attend the inauguration if she uses her visit to press Rwanda -- which is not a member of the court -- to support the ICC.

Pace said that while he hoped perpetrators of war crimes in Congo would be held accountable, the ICC has no jurisdiction over crimes, like the alleged ones in Congo and Rwanda, committed before the court was established.

The ICC has been facing intense opposition from African leaders, who have complained that the tribunal has focused primarily on African crimes, carrying out investigations in Congo, Sudan, Uganda, and Central African Republic and now preparing a new probe into Kenyan violations.

In July, an African Union summit in Kampala, Uganda, decided that "African Union member states shall not cooperate with the ICC in the arrest and surrender of the president of Sudan." It also rejected a request by Moreno-Ocampo to set up a liaison office with the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to help improve cooperation and understanding of the court's mandate.

Moreno-Ocampo maintains that the allegations that he is singling out Africa are unfair, noting that most of his African investigations have been launched at the request of the governments where the crimes occurred. The Sudan probe, however, was authorized by the U.N. Security Council. He had hoped to use the Kagame inauguration, which will draw heads of state from throughout Africa, to restate his case for supporting the court.

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A draft U.N. report on war crimes in Congo has raised the possibility that Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the former rebel leader who is widely credited with ending the Rwandan genocide, bore responsibility for war crimes and genocide that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Hutu civilians during the late 1990s and were allegedly committed by troops under his command.

But did U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon seek to remove any mention of genocide in the report in response to a threat by Kagame's government to withdraw Rwanda's peacekeepers from U.N. missions? Ban is said to fear that such a move by Rwanda would doom the mission and cripple U.N. efforts to protect civilians in Darfur, according to senior U.N. officials

The U.N's sweeping, 545-page "mapping exercise," initiated in 2005 during the tenure of Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan, in 2005, details more than 600 mass killings committed in Congo, formerly known as Zaire, from 1993 to 2003 and claims that the "systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of damning elements that, if proven, could be classified as crimes of genocide." The report's preliminary findings have prompted Rwanda, which is identified as a key alleged perpetrator, to threaten to withdraw its troops from five U.N. peacekeeping missions, including the mission in Darfur.

Ban's press office and a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, have denied an article in Le Monde alleging that Ban pressured Pillay to scrub the word genocide form the report. "I want to make this crystal clear: This is absolutely untrue," said Rupert Colville, Pillay's spokesman. "Up to this point the secretary general has never put pressure on the high commissioner to alter the text."

But officials tell Turtle Bay that while Ban's top advisors never directly asked Pillay to remove the word genocide from the report, they voiced strong concern about its inclusion in the document and asked her to conduct a legal review to ensure she had the basis to back up the charge.

According to U.N. officials, Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, voiced misgivings to Pillay in a phone conversation late last month about the legal basis for the genocide assertion in the report, noting that the Rwandan government arranged for the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hutu refugees, the victims of the alleged genocide. Nambiar appealed to Pillay to have her lawyers revisit the issue to make sure that they could support such a serious charge. But he apparently made no direct request for her to remove the word "genocide" from the report, the officials said.

The U.N.'s top peacekeeping officials, including Under Secretary-General Alain Le Roy, also voiced concern to Pillay and her advisors in a series of meetings about the impact the findings would have on their efforts to ensure Rwanda maintains its involvement in Sudan as the country faces a politically sensitive referendum next year to determine whether the autonomous south will declare its independence. But they said they were essentially resigned to face the consequences of the Congo report.

A final version of the report -- whose release has been delayed till Oct. 1 to give Rwanda and other governments accused time to respond -- will continue to raise the possibility that Rwanda and several other countries, including Uganda, Burundi, and their Congolese allies, committed war crimes and possibly genocide in the 1990s, according to three U.N. officials familiar with the report.

But it will also make it clear that a final judgment can only be made by a court, and note that there is also evidence to suggest that a genocide did not occur, including Rwanda's repatriation of Hutus.

The final version had been revised to "tighten" some of the legal reasoning surrounding the genocide claim, but that there has been no "deliberate effort to excise or expunge certain phrases or words," according to a senior U.N. official. "We may have put it little more bluntly [in the original draft]. Now it's more specific. More nuanced."

The crisis erupted at a time when Ban has been seeking to repair the U.N.'s troubled relationship with Rwanda. Despite advance knowledge of the war crimes findings against Rwanda, Ban appointed Kagame, along with Spanish President Jose Luis Zapatero, as co-chairs of a special advisory group to promote the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which call on governments to sharply reduce poverty and combat other social problems by 2015.

The controversial appointment has triggered protests in Spain, where about 40 Rwandan military officials have been indicted for war crimes allegedly perpetrated in Rwanda in the 1990s. Bowing to the criticism, in July, Zapatero declined to attend his first scheduled meeting with Kagame in Madrid to discuss efforts to promote the millennium goals. He met only with Ban.

It remains unclear whether Zapatero will boycott a second meeting later this month on the sidelines of a major U.N. summit on the MDGs. "We knew it was coming," a senior U.N. official said of the Congo report's findings. "We didn't feel it would go so far and become such a controversy. We looked upon this in terms of Rwanda's record on the MDGs."

"Rwanda has displayed extraordinary commitment to the MDGs and is among the few countries in Africa that have made the most progress towards the goals," said Farhan Haq, Ban's deputy spokesman. "There have been commendable declines in both child and maternal mortality there. The country has also made remarkable progress in reducing the number of reported malaria cases and deaths and has the highest proportion of women parliamentarians in the world."

Ban is also considering Rwanda's foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, to head a new U.N. super agency dealing with women's issues. Mushikiwabo vigorously defended Rwanda's human rights record in a letter to Ban, describing the U.N.'s inquiry into Rwanda's role in war crimes as "apocryphal," "fatally flawed" and an "embarrassment to the United Nations."  She said it was "patently absurd for the U.N., which deliberately turned its back on the Rwandan people during the 1994 genocide, to accuse the army that stopped the genocide of committing atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo."

Mushikiwabo has saved her sharpest criticism for former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was a senior U.N. peacekeeping official during the Rwandan genocide. The mapping exercise into war crimes in Congo was launched under Annan's tenure. "I want to say that his as far as Rwanda and the genocide [is concerned] is pitiful," she said at a recent press conference this week. He "has never taken his responsibility" for failing to confront the perpetrators of genocide. In contrast, Mushikiwabo praised Ban in her letter for leading the United Nations with "honesty, integrity and transparency."

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The United Nations is considering dropping its plan to construct a $100 million, high-security facility in Baghdad to house and protect U.N. workers after American forces leave the country by the end of 2011, U.N. officials told Turtle Bay. The officials said that delays in starting construction had prompted the U.N. to instead consider renting or purchasing a hardened facility relinquished by the departing U.S.-led military coalition.

U.S. plans to withdraw from Iraq have left the U.N. scrambling to develop new security measures to protect the nearly 500 U.N. staff in Iraq. The U.N. mission -- which is headquartered in the U.S.-controlled "green zone" in the center of the capital -- relies heavily on U.S. forces to ensure its safety in Baghdad, as well as in three main regional headquarters: Basra, Erbil and Kirkuk.

As the U.S. continues its drawdown, the U.N. will seek to beef up its own security detail -- recruiting U.N. security officers and hundreds of additional foreign security forces over the next year. The expansion is estimated to cost more than $70 million, bringing the total annual cost of the mission to about $150 million.

Iraq has been buffeted by a resurgence of political violence in recent months, as Iraqi political leaders have failed to reach a political settlement allowing for the formation of a new government. The violence has heightened anxiety among U.N. officials about their own fate, particularly at a time when U.S. President Barack Obama has announced the end of the U.S. combat phase in Iraq, a pivotal step in the withdrawal of American troops.

In principle, the U.N. would like to step up its role in providing humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of returning Iraqi refugees and supporting Iraq's development and reconstruction efforts. But it remains unlikely that the U.N. would play a larger political role in the country, or supplant the U.S. military presence with a U.N. peacekeeping force, as U.S. Army General Raymond T. Odierno recently suggested.

"The Iraqis are getting more assertive about running their own affairs," said one U.N. official. "They don't want outside interference. The U.N. is not abhorred as much as some others but we're generally in the group of outsiders."

The U.N.'s principal security objectives will be focused on ensuring the safety of its own staff as the U.S. gradually closes down the green zone. It will also need to fend for itself in its regional headquarters in Basra and Kirkuk, where it currently relies on American firepower for its safety. The U.N. has ordered two new transport helicopters to reinforce a 28-seater plane it used to ferry U.N. officials around the country. There are plans for two additional helicopters and another fixed-wing aircraft.

Security is a highly sensitive issue for the United Nations, which lost one of its top officials, Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil, in a 2003 terrorist attack against the U.N.'s Baghdad headquarters. Twenty one other U.N. staff and associated were killed in the attack. At the time, the U.N. operated out of its own building, a former hotel outside the U.S.-controlled green zone, in order to underscore its independence from the military coalition. The U.N. withdrew most of its international staff from Iraq after subsequent attacks against the International Red Cross and other international targets.

Since then, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has gradually built the U.N. mission back up in Iraq, and the organization has played a supporting role in promoting elections and national reconciliation in Iraq. The U.N. has depended on a small contingent of more than 200 Fijian peacekeepers for protection for its staff in their Baghdad headquarters. The U.S.-led coalition, which provides them with a building in the green zone, has been responsible for the outer ring of security, and for ensuring U.N. officials can travel safely around Baghdad and the rest of the country.

Still, the perils of working in Baghdad were driven home for Ban in March 2007, when a mortar exploded near a building where the secretary-general and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, were holding a press conference, sending the U.N. chief ducking for cover.

In anticipation of a U.S. drawdown, Ban sought to find a permanent secure home for the U.N. mission. In 2008, Ban requested $100 million from the U.N. General Assembly to fund the new building. The GA has already authorized $5 million to carry out the design stage, but a U.N. official said that it would never be ready before the U.S. completes its withdrawal by the end of 2011.

Other U.N. officials challenged that account, saying the U.N. simply saw the possibility of snapping up a formerly U.S.-occupied facility as a more cost effective way to protect staff. Both officials agreed that life would change dramatically with the American withdrawal.

"The green zone is not as green as it used to be," said one of the officials.

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Last week, Arizona's Republican governor Janice Brewer accused the Obama administration of subjecting U.S. immigration law to U.N. review, saying it was an example of "internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."

But Obama is hardly the first American president to consult the United Nations. In fact, Republican administrations have been subjecting policies on immigration, detention treatment, and a host of other human rights issues to some form of scrutiny by the U.N. and other international bodies for years.

Brewer was protesting the Obama administration's inclusion of a provision highlighting the Department of Justice's efforts to challenge a controversial Arizona immigration law, SB 1070, which expands police powers to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal alien.

American politicians have long derided a career in diplomacy as a dead end for men and women with ambition, as well as a dumping ground for has-been politicians and businessmen who wile away their final coddled days in far flung embassies. Tyler Cowen, the terrific blogger of Marginal Revolution, played on a similar theme last week as he mused about the surly state of the diplomatic life.

"Diplomats are in some ways like university presidents: little hope for job advancement, serving many constituencies, and having little ability to control events," he wrote. "Plus they are underpaid relative to human capital.  They must speak carefully.  They must learn how to wield power in the subtlest ways possible...The entire time on mission the diplomat is eating up his capital and power base, and toward what constructive end?  So someone else can take his place?  And what kind of jobs can you hope to advance into?"

That dim view of diplomacy has long had particular resonance at the United Nations. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1965 until 1968, approached his job with trepidation, recalling that a generation of top American officials had been sent to New York to see their careers run aground. "I had seen Stevenson humiliated. Goldberg betrayed. Ball diminished. Wiggins patronized. Yost ignored. Bush traduced. Scali savaged," Moynihan recalled in his memoirs on his U.N. days, Dangerous Place. "I had twice said no to the post I was now to assume."

Dean Acheson, an affirmed believer in multilateral diplomacy, ran into Moynihan at the Metropolitan Club in Manhattan to convey his contempt for the top American job at the U.N. "Moynihan," Acheson said. "My respect for you took a precipitous decline when I learned you even considered that ridiculous job."

Even Moynihan showed disdain for the job he so clearly coveted. "Scarcely anything of consequence in the world of high politics had happened in Turtle Bay since Korea in the early 1950s, and few could imagine that anything of consequence would ever happen there again," he wrote.

But a quick look at the historical record shows that a top job at the U.N. is actually one of America's great political launching pads. Yes, there are plenty of counterexamples. John Danforth, the former Missouri Senator, and Richard C. Holbrooke, were both passed over for the Secretary of State job after serving at Turtle Bay. And the U.N. was the last stop in the careers of Adlai Stevenson and Arthur J. Goldberg. "I had an exaggerated opinion of my capacities," recalled Goldberg, who gave up his seat on the Supreme Court in 1965, to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where he hoped to lead America out of the Vietnam war. "I thought I could persuade Johnson that we were fighting the wrong war."

But George H.W. Bush went on to become the president of the United States. Madeleine K. Albright, an obscure academic, used her perch as U.N. ambassador to become Secretary of State. Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will almost certainly be a contender for one of America's two top foreign policy jobs, Secretary of State or National Security Advisor, if they open up in the coming years.

Prospects for advancement among foreign diplomats is even better. Russia and Egypt's foreign ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Aboul Gheit, served as their country's U.N. envoys. And Danilo Turk, who served a stint as Slovenia's U.N. ambassador, and subsequently served as a top U.N. official, has gone on to become president of his country. Even Moynihan went on to win elections as New York's senator, serving nearly a quarter century from 1977 to 2001. So, all in all, it's not such a hopeless gig.

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The United Nations' renovation of its landmark headquarters has effectively drawn a curtain of secrecy around the proceedings of the U.N. Security Council, dramatically reducing public access to members of the world's most powerful international security body.

In the past four months, public appearances by the world body's 15 members have dropped precipitously, with Security Council presidents making 20 percent fewer appearances before the Security Council camera stakeout compared with a year ago. The decline is more dramatic for the 14 other members of the council, who have made 64 percent fewer appearances than last year, according to new data compiled by the Columbia University-affiliated think tank, the Security Council Report.

The findings underscore the importance the physical layout of the original U.N. headquarters building -- which provided sweeping neutral spaces and a sprawling delegates' lounge where diplomats mingled freely with reporters -- had played in promoting greater openness of the council's workings. They constitute the first hard evidence to support what reporters and many diplomats have already realized anecdotally -- that the renovation has essentially altered the way that news is gathered and diplomacy is conducted at the United Nations. However, the data does not account for the way in which the new quarters have sharply curtailed the kind of informal contacts reporters and non-council members had with council diplomats at the previous site.

"The Security Council has never been very accessible, but now it is even less so," Christian Wenaweser, Liechtenstein's U.N. ambassador, told Turtle Bay. But he said an even larger problem than the reduction in public appearances by council members is the closure of the delegates' lounge, where council members and other prominent diplomats used to meet each day for coffee and informal networking. "The renovation has had an impact on our work. I spend less time at the U.N. as I used to. There is no place to go, and no reason to go. In the old days, I would be at the U.N. once a day to see who was there. ... People now only go to the U.N. if they have a special reason, a meeting or a speech to deliver; then they go back home. The information flow among the ambassadors is not the same."

The diminished appearances in the council are due to a host of logistical challenges that have arisen since the U.N. moved the council's chamber to cramped, less-accessible temporary quarters in the U.N. basement in April. But it also reflects measures taken by the five permanent members of the Security Council, including the United States, to reduce the number of U.N. officials allowed into closed-door session -- including U.N. press officials that traditionally kept journalists abreast of the council's activities and alerted reporters when council meetings were about to end. And the council recently ordered the removal of a second camera trained on the council entrance that allowed reporters to monitor diplomats entering and exiting the council chamber.

"There is no doubt that the constraints of the new temporary facilities are a key factor in [the reduction of public appearances], including the distance between the stake out venue from the new locations for the U.N. press corps," according to the Security Council Report. "Although the new facilities are temporary, the physical status quo seems likely to prevail for some time and there is therefore a real risk that the information status quo will become a permanent habit."

The report's findings hint at suspicions among reporters, many diplomats, and other observers that the Security Council's big powers -- including the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- have taken advantage of the renovation to impose greater secrecy over the council's deliberations. In the first weeks after the move, the council imposed a series of sweeping restrictions that limited press movement to a tightly cordoned area and blocked non-members of the Security Council from entering the council chamber. The U.N. stakeout camera previously stationed outside the council -- requiring council diplomats to walk past it -- is now positioned far from the council chamber, requiring diplomats go out of their way to hold a press conference.

"Appearances of the council president and other council members at the media stakeout have proved over the years to be a major source of insight to the informal work of the council," according to the Security Council Report. "Such appearances have significantly improved the transparency of the council and the information available to member states and the wider public -- especially since the advent of the U.N. webcast archive. However questions have arisen since the relocation of the Security Council in April 2010 to new temporary premises regarding ongoing transparency."

In the weeks following the move, the Security Council yielded to pressure from the U.N. Correspondent's Association and the U.N. diplomat corps to restore some of those lost privileges, including measures that permitted non-council members the right to wait in the council's lounge for the council's deliberations to end. The council also agreed to allow U.N. reporters access to a stairwell outside the council, so they could interview council diplomats as they left the building. But the findings show that the changes have not stalled the council's retreat from the public. In fact, in recent weeks, the council has taken new steps to restrict outside scrutiny of its work, ordering the removal of a second U.N. camera that monitors diplomat's going in and out of the council chamber. "It has never been made clear why the camera was removed," said Louis Charbonneau, a Reuters reporters who as vice president of the U.N. Correspondent's Association has been trying to get the camera restored.

The United States has defended the decision to restrict the number of U.N. officials from closed-door Security Council sessions on the grounds that there is value in ensuring that the content of such meetings remain confidential. But the U.S. insists that it has worked strenuously to ensure that the U.N. press corps has as much access as possible, and that it has studiously given reporters advance warning when Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, or other senior U.S. officials are planning to brief the press.

"The U.S. mission wants reporters at the U.N. to have the same access to officials and diplomats as they did in the old Security Council space. And we've been working with the U.N. and our council colleagues to make that happen," Mark Kornblau, the spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, told Turtle Bay. "In response to UNCA's concerns about freedom of movement, the U.S. mission led the effort to restore journalists' access to the staircase leading to the Security Council chamber, so that reporters can now -- and once again -- approach diplomats on their way into and out of the chamber. If someone wants to make a request of the U.S. mission to work with our colleagues on the Security Council and encourage the U.N. to turn the camera back on facing the door, we don't have any problem with that."

Those measures have improved access, according to UNCA representatives, but they have not fully addressed a press policy that appears increasingly arbitrary, with responsibility divided between U.N. officials and the staff of the Security Council's rotating presidency. While some countries, like the United States, Britain, and France, have a tradition of responding to press demands for information, many of the council's members don't. And they routinely provide reporters with advance warning when their top officials plan to address to press.

For instance, Mexico, which held the presidency in June, sent routine emails to reporters with detailed updates on all the council's activities. But Lebanon, which held the presidency in May, had virtually no informal channels with the press. The U.N. Security Council Affairs division, which has traditionally played a discrete role in supporting the work of the council's 15 members but which has virtually no contact with the press corps, is responsible for informing the U.N. press office when a meeting is about to end. But the Security Council Report's study faulted the Security Council Affairs division, suggesting it had not provided "timely liaison" with other interested parties, presumably the press.

Charbonneau said that members of the U.N. press corps -- who have been relocated to the U.N. library,,a good 10 minute walk from the Security Council -- are often given insufficient warning time to make their way across the U.N. campus before the meeting ends. There is a shortcut that can get you to the council in half the time by walking through the U.N. basement, but at least two reporters, including a CNN employee and a Lebanese reporter, have gotten trapped in a high- security revolving door en route to the council.

Charbonneau also recalled hearing Russia's U.N. ambassador Vitaly I Churkin, who served as the Security Council president, start his briefing to the press just as the U.N. press office announced he was planning to deliver it. "He was starting to open his mouth but he had to stop because the squawk was so loud," Charbonneau said. Churkin was gone by the time the rest of the press corps arrived.

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Anna Tibaijuka, the outgoing head of the U.N.'s top settlements agency, UN-Habitat, sharply criticized U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a parting letter for failing to swiftly appoint a successor despite frequent appeals to ensure a smooth leadership transition.

The Tanzanian chief of the Nairobi-based agency, which is responsible for promoting housing rights for the poor, warned in the confidential letter dated Aug. 10 that the avoidable "management and leadership vacuum" threatened to derail the agency's achievements and endanger international funding for its programs. She also complained that she had not been consulted about the recruitment process for selecting her successor and suggested she was being forced out of the U.N. system unwillingly.

"As my tenure at UN-Habitat comes to a close, I am writing to you with a deep sense of urgency and frustration to express my concern and distress about the coming delay to appoint my successor in good time so that I could have undertaken an orderly handover," she wrote in the letter. "I fear a period without leadership is likely if not bound to destabilize UN-Habitat once again, given that we have a perilous global financial environment due to the economic difficulties being faced by our donor members states...[D]onors are unlikely to commit new funding until they are convinced that good leadership is in place."

Ban's office challenged Tiibaijuka's account, saying he has already picked a successor. "The secretary-general has already made his selection and we have taken the matter up with the regional groups. The General Assembly will have to set out a date for their action," said Farhan Haq, Ban's acting deputy spokesman. "Anna Tibaijuka had given her views on the process and the possible candidates. This input was also carefully considered and the outcome also reflects that."

Tibaijuka is one of a number of senior officials who have recently left the United Nations in anger and frustration. Inga-Britt Ahlenius, the former chief of internal oversight, wrote a scathing end of assignment letter earlier this month accusing Ban undercutting her independence and interfering with her right to recruit her own staff. Robert Appleton, a former top internal investigations chief, filed a grievance with the U.N. this month on the grounds that his appointment by Ahlenius for the U.N.'s top investigations job was blocked on the grounds of discrimination.

Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Tibaijuka executive director of the U.N. chief housing agency in September 2000, making her the most senior African woman in the U.N. system until Ban hired a former Tanzanian foreign minister, Asha-Rose Migiro, in 2007 as his deputy secretary-general. In 2006, Annan appointed Tibaijuka director general of the U.N. office, which has responsibility over Habitat and the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP).

A former academic, Tibaijuka is perhaps best known for writing a 2005 report on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's massive displacement program -- dubbed Operation Murambatsvina, or Operation Drive Out the Trash -- which carried out large scale evictions of alleged squatters and unregistered businesses in poor neighborhoods, particularly those linked to the country's political opposition. Tibaijuka concluded that the evictions were discriminatory, unjustified and inhumane.

Tibaijuka is credited with raising the profile of the U.N. housing agency and persuading the UN Secretary General to upgrade it from a small department to a full-fledged U.N. program. In her letter, she claims to have taken an institution that was "in tatters" and that she leaves behind an institution with a "working reserve that I built from scratch."

But she has had cool relations with Ban, who last year stripped her of authority for running the U.N. office in Nairobi. The post was transferred to Achim Steiner, a German national who heads UNEP. Last September, Tibaijuka appealed to Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to consider her for a new job in the U.N. system when her term at Habitat expires at the end of this month. But U.N. officials said that she will be leaving.

"I have not had any formal indications concerning incumbency of my post, but I anticipate that the secretary general does not have an intention of recommending my renewal," Tibjaijuka wrote in the letter to Nambiar. "Nonetheless, I await your advice on the next steps concerning my future based on the principle of rotation. As you might be aware, I was originally engaged in the UN as a contracted staff member. I am not aware of ever having lost that standing upon my translation to Executive Director and I retain all the entitlements concerning continuity of employment that my default status entails."

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Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi presented the U.N.'s members with a stark challenge: Help Pakistan recover from its most devastating natural disaster in modern history or run the risk of surrendering a key front in the war on terror.

"This disaster has hit us hard at a time, and in areas, where we are in the midst of fighting a war against extremists and terrorists," Qureshi warned foreign delegates, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, at a U.N. donor's conference on the Pakistani flood. "If we fail, it could undermine the hard won gains made by the government in our difficult and painful war against terrorism. We cannot allow this catastrophe to become an opportunity for the terrorists."

Qureshi provided one of his darkest assessments to date of the political, economic and security  costs of Pakistan's floods, which have placed more than 20 million people in need of assistance, destroyed more than 900,000 homes and created financial losses of over $43 billion. "We are the people that the international community looks towards, as a bulwark against terrorism and extremism," he said, adding that Pakistan "now looks towards the international community to show a similar determination and humanity in our hour of need."

The blunt speech was part of a broader effort by Pakistan, the United Nations, the United States and its military allies in the region to goad the international community into stepping up funding for the relief effort, which has been severely underfunded. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged an additional $60 million to the U.N. flood relief in Pakistan, bringing the total U.S. contribution to $150 million. Britain's development minister, Andrew Mitchell, pledged an additional $33 million, saying that the pace of funding for has been "woefully inadequate."

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who recently visited the flood disaster region, also sought to dramatize the extraordinary nature of the floods, which have inundated 20 percent of Pakistan, an area larger than Italy. Ban said more people have been affected by the flood than the combined populations hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, Cyclone Nargis, and the Haitian earthquake. "Pakistan is facing a slow-motion tsunami; its destructive power will accumulate and grow with time," Ban told U.N. delegates. "At least 160,000 square kilometers of land is under water -- an area larger than more than half the countries of the world."   

"We have never seen anything like this before. 1919, I'm told was a mega flood. This far exceeds that," Qureshi told a gathering of diplomats, investors, journalists and Pakistani-Americans at a discussion on the flood at the Asia Society.

Qureshi, who was joined by Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, singled out the United States for leading the international effort to respond to the worst natural calamity in modern history. "Thank you America," said Qureshi, noting that ordinary Pakistanis recognized the role that the United States has played since the floods struck. "You have contributed significantly; you have shown the world that you are a caring nation."

He also thanked George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, who announced plans today to allocate $5 million -- more money than the vast majority of foreign countries contributing to the flood response -- to a Pakistan democracy program he runs to help those in need. The InterAsian Development Bank also announced it would make $2 billion in low interest loans over the next two years to help pave the way to a massive reconstruction effort.

Today's pledges moved the U.N. closer to raising the nearly $460 million it is seeking to fund relief operations over the next six months. The fund raising effort has drawn criticism of many of Pakistan's closest allies, including oil rich sheikdoms like Saudi Arabia and China, which have provided only a trickle of aid to the U.N.-led relief effort."I think the Chinese should step up to the plate," Holbrooke said in a briefing with a handful of reporters. "They always say Pakistan is their closest ally."

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, which has faced sharp criticism for its slow response, announced that it will pledge about $105 million in assistance, most of it in the form of relief supplies. Only about $5 million will be provided in cash to the Pakistan National Disaster Management Authority. None is earmarked for the U.N.'s relief efforts. The European Union has also increased its funding commitment by $39 million to about $90 million. Several other countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, also made new contributions today.

But Qureshi defended his country's allies, saying that Saudi Arabia has been sending relief planes into Pakistan ever since the flood began and that China has stepped in to provide life-saving assistance to more than 27,000 Pakistanis who live near the Chinese border. "They have never let us down in the past and I don't expect them to let us down now," he said of China.

Qureshi and Holbrooke said they were acutely aware that the Pakistani floods could have massive strategic implications for their countries' security interests in the region, but insisted that, for now,  their main focus was on saving lives. Holbrooke also made it clear that the U.S. saw the flood as an opportunity to showcase American generosity, saying he and other top U.S. diplomats had developed a slogan. "We want to be the first in, with the most assistance," he said.

Qureshi acknowledged criticism that the Pakistan government was slow to respond in the initial days of the flood. "Initially there was shock and paralysis but we are now getting our act together," he said. "We've been struck by this national calamity; we will face it and we will muster the resources and get out of this."

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