The Mayor's U.N. Demarche

Congratulations are in order for Mayor Bloomberg for threatening to cancel all public school trips to the United Nations. By confronting the world body on the slovenly state in which it has kept its headquarters building, which city officials warn is a fire trap, the mayor sets up a logic for the city to start enforcing not only its fire safety regulations but other laws that govern the charlatans, anti-Semites, and communist goons who people the place. Not all of the United Nations staff and diplomatic corps can be labeled miscreants. But enough can be so that the fire safety regulations are the least of the dangers to our school children — and to the rest of our population — from the headquarters in Turtle Bay.

The latest letter from City Hall went out yesterday over the signature of the mayor's sister, Marjorie Tiven, who serves as our commissioner of the United Nations consular corps. She's done heroic work in respect of the U.N., trying to keep everything copasetic with the consular types. And she writes a crackerjack letter about fire safety, which has taken on some urgency since the death of two firefighters in the Deutsche Bank fire; the city was on the case even before the Deutsche Bank tragedy, however. Ms. Tiven has given the United Nations officials a deadline for taking certain actions, and the most significant thing about her letter is the assumption that the city has authority in this matter.

As well it should, particularly because neither the Bush administration or the United States Congress has been prepared to get tough and simply withhold funding from the world body. As long as the city is asserting its authority in respect of fire safety, however, there are plenty of other issues, including laws regarding the kinds of bribery we've seen in the oil for food scandal, the parking tickets disputes, and our rent control laws. These are all matters where we believe that not only Ms. Tiven deserves to be involved, but also our various county prosecutors. It's way past time for the city to take an extremely aggressive interpretation as to its rights under the various diplomatic protocols.

More broadly, however, neither aggressive enforcement of the fire code nor the parking code nor the criminal code is adequate to the task of protecting our school children, not to mention our adults and taxpayers, from the United Nations. The right approach is for the world body to take the hints it has been getting repeatedly — from the city government, from the legislature in Albany, from the Congress — and begin a global search for a new headquarters city, outside of New York or America. We've long since suggested Bonn, which has lots of empty office buildings since the German government moved its seat back to Berlin. The mood has improved slightly at the United Nations since the accession of the new secretary general. But he would err badly if he assumed that the friendliness of the mayor means New Yorkers more generally welcome the U.N. If our politicians really thought the New Yorkers wanted the U.N. here, they would put the matter to the vote of the people.