Put the Stadium At Turtle Bay

West Side stadium. West Side stadium. That's all we hear about, and the general consensus is that most New Yorkers do not want it. Well, here's another option that I guarantee will win unanimous approval: Why not build an East Side stadium on the East River waterfront acreage where the United Nations currently takes up valuable real estate?

Surely, I'm not the only New Yorker who's fed up with the corruption, incompetence, and impotence of this Third World bureaucratic dinosaur posing as a credible international mediator. It's not just the oil-for-food scandal that makes me wonder why this East Side behemoth is still tolerated in our great city. No, it is how the United Nations has responded to crises when they fell within the confines of its charter obligations.

Part of Article 1 of the United Nations Charter reads: "To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion."

Surely, acts of genocide should qualify as an international problem, but as long as it takes place in African countries, like Rwanda and the Sudan, the United Nations has not responded with due diligence. Can it be that this anti-American organization is also anti-African?

For once, the entertainment industry has performed a public service by offering works that enlighten us on the horror that took place in 1994 in Rwanda. Hollywood presented us last year with "Hotel Rwanda," based on the real-life heroism of an African "Schindler" by the name of Paul Rusesabagina, who housed more than 1,000 targeted Tsutis in the hotel he managed.

This Saturday, HBO will present "Sometimes in April," an extraordinary docudrama that, unlike "Hotel Rwanda," was actually filmed in Rwanda. Whatever stereotypical images we have of a jungle-filled Africa will be dispelled bythe disturbing sight of primal carnage taking place in a beautifully landscaped country not that different from our own. I was reminded of "Helter Skelter" and the Manson family running amok in the canyons above Beverly Hills.

Not only will this cable movie clarify the events that led up to the massacres, it will show the fecklessness of the U.N. peacekeeping force whose main interest involved securing the safety of Europeans in the area. The U.S. administration, cowed by the disaster in Somalia, determined that Americans did not have the will to send in troops to stop the genocide, so it did nothing. Besides, it was Africans killing Africans and thus it wasn't our business, we're told.

We hear so many critics of the Bush administration complain that America should not be the policeman of the world. Whose job is it, then? Certainly not the blue-helmeted peacekeepers that are shown in the HBO film getting the stuffing kicked out of them by the Rwandan Hutu military.

There also hasn't been too much press on what is occurring in eastern Congo, where militia and renegade soldiers have been raping and beating tens of thousands of women and young girls. These crimes have gone unpunished because the judicial system there has broken down. Enter the United Nations and oops! Apparently, some of these so-called peacekeepers may even be involved in the abuse. According to a March 8 report from the Associated Press: "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the 'appalling misconduct of a minority of peacekeepers' in late January after they were found to have exploited women and girls in Bunia. Peacekeepers traded sweets, eggs, or pocket change for sex, a U.N. investigation found. They have been accused of raping girls as well."

Judging from President Bush's nomination of John Bolton, a known U.N. critic, as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., I'm assuming the president's opinion of the U.N. is less than laudatory. Mr. Bolton once noted that the U.N. Secretariat building in New York "has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Nevertheless, Mayor Bloomberg has supported U.N. expansion under the mistaken opinion that the U.N. is an asset to the city. His sister, Marjorie Tiven, has been dispatched to Albany to try to break the legislative block in the Republican Senate on financing this scheme.

I would suggest to the mayor that he tune in tomorrow to watch "Sometimes in April," and perhaps he, too, will wonder what good the United Nations does and how fast can we get rid of it. East Side stadium, anyone?