UNITED NATIONS – Far from a beacon of justice to the countries of the world, the United Nations is “in breach of its own human rights standards because of the unfair way it treats its own employees,” according to a report due to be released today by an independent panel of three international jurists hired by Turtle Bay’s Staff Union to investigate the United Nations’s internal justice system.

As the panel condemned the lack of transparency in the U.N staff complaints system, the chairman of a congressional body that may play a key role in approving American funds to refurbish the crumbling U.N. landmark building, Senator Coburn, a Republican of Oklahoma, said that before they send more money for the renovation project legislators would need to see more “transparency and sunshine” at the United Nations.

The three-man panel, headed by a British jurist who played a key role in such cases as last year’s decision to send former Argentinian dictator Pinochet to stand trial in his homeland, Justice Geoffrey Robertson, was appointed after U.N. staffers repeatedly complained about abuse by their superiors in the organization and the lack of accountable bodies in which to air their grievances.

“It was an eye opener,” Mr. Robertson told The New York Sun yesterday. Describing a system where everything is conducted “under wraps and in secret,” he said justice is all but impossible for Turtle Bay employees. The existing structure “is a sclerotic system that dates back to the League of Nations,” he said, adding he doubted it could be reformed under the current leadership of Secretary-General Annan.

“Reform has been on the U.N. agenda for over a decade, and there must be a real question over management resolve to progress it,” the report said, recommending that the General Assembly reconvenes in three years, under new leadership, reviving the attempt to promote reform ideas raised last year at a Turtle Bay summit of heads of state.

Mr. Coburn, who chairs the Senate’s Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security, said that while he would like to see more transparency across the whole U.N. system, the main target of his visit to Turtle Bay yesterday was to inspect the plan to renovate the decaying 1950s tower on First Avenue, and assess the procurement system related to it.

For Congress to approve funds for the renovation plan it “is going to require real sunshine,” Mr. Coburn told reporters, emerging from a meeting with the under secretary general, Mark Malloch Brown. He described the session as “frank exchange of views,” a well-worn diplomatic jargon for deep disagreements.

The meeting, planned some time ago, took place one week after a well-publicized speech in which Mr. Malloch Brown expressed doubts about the way “middle America” understands Turtle Bay, and in which he called on Bush administration officials to inform Americans better than do adversarial press bodies like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

“He misunderstands middle America,” Mr. Coburn told reporters after the session with the United Nations’s second in command. “We understand the value of the U.N.” he added. “Nobody in Washington does not want a U.N. We want a U.N. that’s functioning properly.”

The subcommittee Mr. Coburn heads plans a oversight hearing on June 20 in Washington into the United Nations’s so-called Capital Master Plan, the blueprint for the renovation of the crumbling building.

Last year, senators on the subcommittee held up an issue of the Sun that reported on the waste in the proposed plan, at the time estimated at $1.2 billion to execute. Since then, the plan’s projected cost has risen to $1.7 billion, and the American who headed it, Louis Frederick Reuter, has resigned in frustration.

After the United Nations spent $6 million on a design plan, the details of which were not disclosed to member states, the United Nations’s organ charged with finance, known as the Fifth Committee, recently asked member states to finance the next installment of the plan’s cost, assessed at $100.5 million. The committee, however, was unable to agree on how the funds would be spent.

The Bush administration nevertheless included a request for funding the American share of the installment – over $22 million – in its recent budget. The subcommittee’s hearing is designed to help Congress to decide whether to approve the funds or turn down the administration’s request.

Mr. Coburn said that without more information it will be difficult to approve more money. “It ain’t gonna’ fly with the American Congress,” he said. “The U.N. is going to decide what it does; the United States Senate isn’t going to decide what they do. But we are going to decide whether we are going to pay for it.”

Last week, Senator Sessions, a Republican of Alabama, and Senator Inhofe, a Republican of Oklahoma, joined Mr. Coburn in a letter to Secretary of State Rice, demanding “increased transparency and procurement reform at the United Nations before the international body embarks on an expensive and flawed plan to renovate the U.N. Headquarters complex in the high-rent district of New York City.”