As if we needed one more thing to undermine our confidence in the United Nations, it appears that they don’t even know how to use MS Word. From the Times of London:

The United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.

The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

The final, edited version quoted a witness as saying that the plot to kill Mr Hariri was hatched by unnamed senior Lebanese and Syrian officials?. But the undoctored version named those officials as Maher al-Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamal al-Sayyed.

The deleted names represent the inner core of the Syrian regime. …

Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor. But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended.

At a press conference yesterday Herr Mehlis insisted that Mr Annan had not pressurised him into making changes. No one outside of the report team influenced these changes and no changes whatsoever were suggested by the Secretary-General, he said.

According to Ace of Spades (who supplied the above informaiton), the Jerusalem Post is reporting that the deletions were carried out at the behest of Kofi Annan. Ace of Spades is posting regular updates and is the best place to track this story.

That said, no one has asked the most important question about this whole matter, doesn’t anyone at the United Nations know they should be sending documents as PDFs?

Also on the story: Captain’s Quarters Jawa

Update: UN Assassination Report, Unredacted

technorati: UN United Nations kofi annan Syria

trackbacked: Mudville Gazette Political Teen Stop the ACLU Wizbang Indepundit

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 at 7:58 am by Insider and is filed under War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.