Jesse Helms, an influential right-wing conservative who had the power to block the U.S. contribution to the United Nations, had his own political agenda in disparaging the world body. But his criticism touched a raw nerve in an institution whose peacekeeping operations in the 1990s were infamous for their fraud and malfeasance.

The United Nations, which has long preached transparency and accountability to the outside world, is now launching a programme ”to mainstream ethics and integrity within the Organisation”, according to Dileep Nair, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services, told reporters.

The proposed scheme, called the Organisational Integrity Initiative, would allow the organisation ”to apply internally the emerging approaches on corruption control and building organisational integrity”, Nair told reporters Thursday.

The move comes at a time when the United Nations is pushing for a global convention against corruption, which is expected to be signed by the 191 U.N. member states at a meeting scheduled for Mexico by the end of this year.

Asked why the initiative is needed when the U.N. charter already specifies standards for the ethical behaviour of international civil servants, Nair answered that while the majority of U.N. staff members are people of high integrity, ”it was no secret that there were instances of fraud and corruption within the U.N. system”.

That was one of the reasons why his own agency, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), was created in 1994, Nair added.

The United States, which has long accused the United Nations of nurturing an ineffective and ”bloated bureaucracy”, played a key role in the creation of OIOS.

Madeleine Albright, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, constantly complained that the world body had ”developed wasteful habits during the Cold War that have yet to be fully cured”.

But since the late 1990s, the global body has undergone drastic changes, including the merger and abolition of several departments and the reduction of staff by more than 10 percent.

Nair said that integrity and ethics were now a high priority for the United Nations and a crucial ingredient in Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s ongoing efforts to reform the organisation.

The new initiative also comes at a time when the international community and the corporate world are preoccupied with the issue of governance.

Currently, Western donors and most U.N. agencies insist on ”good governance” – a corruption-free, multi-party democracy respectful of the rule of law and human rights – as a pre-condition for development aid.

As a prelude to the launch of the initiative, U.N. officials will participate in a programme on corruption and integrity at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.

The history of U.N. peacekeeping operations has been marked by theft, fraud and gross mismanagement, according to diplomats here.

The U.N.’s biggest single loss is the still-unresolved robbery of 3.9 million dollars in cash stolen from U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia in April 1994.

The robbery remains a mystery despite intervention by England’s elite Scotland Yard, which drew a blank after months of investigations. No staff member was held responsible for the loss.

The United Nations also held no employees responsible for the overpayment of nearly one million dollars in special allowances to U.N. peacekeepers in Kuwait years ago.

The body also concluded that one of its most expensive peacekeeping operations, in Cambodia, was marred by a rash of robberies and the loss of millions of dollars worth of trucks, cars, cellular phones, computers and electronics equipment.

A U.N. report admitted that more than eight million dollars in equipment were stolen – mostly by unknown persons – from the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

The stolen equipment included three million dollars worth of vehicles, 2.5 million dollars in communications equipment, 1.5 million dollars in laptop computers, half a million dollars in prefabricated accommodation and 453,000 dollars in generators.

Although monies were not recovered, the United Nations hinted that the robbery may have been an ”inside job”.

An Asian diplomat told IPS that member states would welcome the new initiative aimed at eliminating fraud and corruption.

He said the United Nations has had several watchdog bodies overseeing management, including the Board of Auditors, the Joint Inspection Unit and the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ).

”But despite the existence of these bodies, waste and mismanagement have continued in the U.N. system,” he added.