Linked to WWII crimes, Waldheim continues to receive UN pension

By Michael Freund, Jerusalem Post, 20 October 2002

Despite having been linked to Nazi crimes against the Jews, former United
Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim continues to receive a six-figure
pension from the world body, the New York Daily News reports.

Waldheim, who served as a Wehrmacht intelligence officer and has been on
a US Justice Department 'watch list' since 1987, receives an annual
pension of $124,754. He served two five-year terms as the UN's chief
official from 1972 to 1982.

Former US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as US
representative to the UN from 1975 to 1976, denounced the continued
payments to Waldheim.

"The awful fact that he still receives a UN pension speaks to the
corruption of an institution that has abandoned the principles on which
it was established", he said, adding, "Waldheim was a low point in UN
history."

In the mid-1980's, a Justice Department probe revealed that Waldheim had
"assisted or participated in" Nazi deportations and executions of Greek
and Yugoslav Jews and allied soldiers in the Balkans during World War II.


In 1986, Moynihan introduced a nonbinding rider to a congressional
anti-terrorism bill that would have frozen Waldheim's pension by
withholding U.S. contributions to it. The measure was approved, but no
action has ever been taken to implement it.

Waldheim, who is now 83, will continue to receive his UN pension until
his death, at which time his widow will collect half of it annually until
she dies.

The paper notes that when Waldheim retired from the UN in 1982, his
pension was $80,000 per year, but that it was repeatedly increased even
as evidence surfaced regarding his involvement in war-time atrocities.

                                    
Adelaide Institute comment: What about Solomon Morel, that Jewish war criminal who fled Poland for Israel in 1999? Will this man be extradited to Den Haag, or elsewhere to face criminal proceedings?