Whistleblowing doctor wins back UN job

A New Zealand doctor who co-wrote a book exposing sex, drugs and corruption among United Nations peacekeeping forces has won his job back with the UN.

Andrew Thomson lost his job after writing Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, a True Story from Hell on Earth, with former co-worker Kenneth Cain, and current UN employee Heidi Postlewait.

The doctor's attorneys said the case was a test for how the UN, which is working on whistleblower regulations, treats critics among its staff.

Tom Devine, legal director of the Washington-based Government Accountability Project, which defends whistleblowers, said Dr Thomson would stay in his post after his contract expires on December 31 and not be forced to leave the UN.

Dr Thomson and his lawyers contend his employment was terminated because of the book he co-authored.

In an email to journalists, Mr Devine said that "based on confirmation from highly reliable sources", there had been an "informal resolution of his case". He did not give details.

"Dr Thomson looks forward to many more years at the United Nations, serving its vital mission," Mr Devine wrote.

The case had also won the backing of Senator Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican who chairs the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He wrote to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asking him to investigate the Thomson controversy and provide a progress report on promised whistleblower protection regulations.

Dr Thomson worked for the UN on a year-to-year contract, including exhuming corpses to obtain forensic evidence of massacres in Rwanda and the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.

Heidi Postlewait still works for the organisation. Her contract has about 18 months to run. Kenneth Cain has left.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard on Wednesday hinted that the case might be resolved. He said the authors had violated UN staff rules barring outside publication without permission but that would be grounds for a reprimand rather than dismissal. Thomson's contract meant he could work only 11 months annually, Mr Eckhard said.

Mr Annan said last week that the world body sought to make senior managers more accountable and "we are also taking measures to strengthen the protection of whistleblowers".

Although UN rules call for wrongdoers to be punished, they do nothing to shield staff members from reprisals when they come forward with evidence, said Dr Thomson's attorneys.

Dear diary

* In June, New Zealander Andrew Thomson and his co-authors, administrator Heidi Postlewait and human rights lawyer Ken Cain, published their raw, diary-style book exposing UN corruption.

* They had sought permission from UN top brass but it was refused.The book records the UN's failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda, drug-taking and boozing by personnel, and claims that Bulgarian peacekeepers sent to Cambodia were convicts and psychiatric patients.

* "If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run," Dr Thomson wrote.

- REUTERS