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Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, CNTBTO

a new $30 million UN early tsunami-warning system? They already have one!

by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com

January 24, 2005

The United States, which wants to take an international role in setting up a global tsunami-warning system and is in the running for the job with the United Nations, doubts the UN has the ability to coordinate such a program.

Uncle Sam is right.

although it rated little mainline media attention, The UN already had a tsunami-warning system in place on December 26, 2004. The existing warning system goes under another one of those confusing UN names: the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, CNTBTO for UN short.

as reported by the International Herald Tribune, this was the state of affairs at Vienna, austria CNTBTO headquarters on December 26: "Early on Sunday morning, powerful computers in a Vienna office building received seismic data on the earthquake that spawned the devastating tsunamis across South asia–information that might have saved lives in the hours between the quake and the waves hitting the coasts of Sri Lanka, India and several other countries." (Emphasis Canada Free Press).

But the life-saving data streaming into CNTBTO headquarters was for naught, as the 300-plus staff supposedly manning the computers was on vacation until January 4.

With promises of a treaty going nowhere since its 1996 inception, the CNTBO with a senior staff that only comes to the office only to check emails, is the stuff of sitcoms.

add to this comi-tragedy, that the CNTBTO has been effectively grounded ever since the Islamic State of Iran shut off one of its monitoring stations in January of 2002 and that the international community has turned a blind eye on the UN agency even though its $100,000 a year salaries to aWOL senior staff are still being paid.

Yet, the UN, announced last Wednesday the launching of the International Early Warning Program, intended as an umbrella organization to coordinate efforts by various UN agencies to create a global warning system for all kinds of natural disasters, such as droughts, floods and landslides.

Heaven help any global citizens hoping to keep dry with a UN umbrella.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, (UNESCO) which runs the IOC, has proposed a warning network for the Indian Ocean that would only cost $30 million and could not only be up and running--but fully extended to cover world wide by mid-2007,

But first, dithering diplomats at the UN would have to sort through the differing ideas about what exactly should be done. UNESCO plans two meetings in Paris, the first in early March, to put all the proposals on the table, find common ground and work toward a single course of action.

That plan is somewhat akin to Kofi trying to separate, strand by strand, a mountain of spaghetti on his supper plate.

There are those who suspect that the UN is not always responsible when it comes to the management of money, such as its dubious coordination of the scandal-plagued Oil-For-Food program.

With friends and ex-officials of the UN probing Oil-for-Food, Uncle Sam has little hope of ever proving UN corruption. There would be better staying power if UN agencies, such as CNTBTO were filed for `I' under "Inept".


Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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