NEW YORK (dpa) – The visitors, including diplomats, should be very careful when they visit the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Hot steam from a leaky heating pipe could scorch them, or perhaps they might be hit by plaster falling from the ceilings. Or they might slip and fall in a puddle of water created by a bursting pipe.
And if there is a fire alarm, visitors and employees will have to struggle with the world’s diplomats in trying to escape via very narrow emergency exits.
Just before the “biggest summit conference of all times” – with more than 190 state and government leaders – U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has called attention to the severe structural and safety deficiencies of the U.N. building.
The report says that those in the U.N. complex have a lower chance of survival in a fire than in other comparable buildings in New York. The U.N. building does not fulfill even the most minimum fire safety standards or of energy efficiency.
Simply put, the general decay has been “dramatic” at the building designed 50 years ago by the famous architects Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and Wallace K. Harrison.
A Kenyan diplomat doesn’t mince his words when he says about the U.N. headquarters building: “This is one big junk heap. Even in Africa we have more modern buildings for international conferences.”
Besides the quite evident safety deficiencies, thousands of U.N. employees have become tired of other irritating things like escalators breaking down and carpets smelling musty.
If you want to get a U.N. diplomat to start cursing, just mention the air conditioning system – it heats the building in the summer and cools it in the winter, and otherwise is suspected of circulating any number of air pollutants into the offices and conference rooms.
The reasons behind this sorry state is clear. For years the world body has lacked the money for any major repair work. But now the frustrated building maintenance workers see a ray of hope.
Namely, they were hoping that when the world’s most influential men and women came for the September 6-8 summit to lay down an agenda for the 21st Century, they will also cast an eye on Annan’s “Capital Master Plan” to reconstruct the U.N. headquarters.
However, one figure in the plan is likely to be underlined in thick red lines – the one billion dollars which the planners say will be necessary for the job. This is some 160 times the original 65 million dollars which the 39-storey building originally cost.
Under the plans, the skyscraper of the U.N. Secretariat, the General Assembly building and the surrounding structures are, starting in 2001 at the latest, to undergo a thorough step-by-step rejuvenation.
It would mean that hundreds of U.N. employees will have to work for months, if not for years, in provisional offices set up for them.
To foot the bill, the more affluent among the U.N.’s 188 members will be called on to contribute, in particular the United States, Japan and Germany.
