UNITED NATIONS — The Clinton Foundation and the United Nations are being curiously tight-lipped about a meeting that took place last week between the foundation’s head of foreign policy and the UN’s Deputy Secretary-General — the latest sign of the controversial organization’s continued and sometimes surreptitious maneuverings.
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed met Friday with the Clinton Foundation’s director of foreign policy Amitabh Desai. The meeting was first noticed by UN blog Inner City Press, in a one line entry on Mohammed’s schedule.
A spokesman for Secretary-General António Guterres told Breitbart News on Friday that the meeting, which took place at the UN headquarters in New York City, was “part of the ongoing effort to engage and mobilise support from different development partners and stakeholders for the implementation of the 2030 Development Agenda.”
The 2030 Agenda is the UN’s main push for its “sustainable development” goals. These goals are intended to broadly solve global problems such as poverty and inequality while doing so in a way that also combats climate change.
When asked further about the meeting, particularly on whether the meeting involved the discussion of donations or financial support, the spokesman’s office said they had no further information. The Clinton Foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Breitbart News. The UN also did not provide a readout of the meeting to the press.
At a press briefing Monday, a spokesman for the Secretary-General, in responding to a question about the meeting, mentioned that the discussion involved how to get “more resources mobilized for… in order to fund the development agenda.” This suggests that at least some of the conversation was about funding.
While such meetings on sustainable development are not uncommon, a question mark will always hang over the dealings of the Clinton Foundation considering its links not only with the Clintons, but also past accusations of pay-to-play involving the foundation’s dealings.
It also raises concerns about the UN — which has shown an anti-Trump bias on a number of occasions — allowing top officials to rub shoulders with officials from the foundation belonging to Trump’s 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton.
Secretary-General Guterres, in particular, has criticized the U.S. decision to leave the Paris Climate treaty, while the High Commissioner for Human Rights has compared Trump to ISIS. One of Guterres’ advisers is economist Jeffrey Sachs, who has called Trump an “idiot” over the decision to abandon the Paris deal, and previously called him a “non-stop font of lies.”
Mohammed herself, a former environment minister in Nigeria, accused Trump of “treading water” in May over the Paris agreement before Trump made his decision.
“I think he is treading water until he has to say something, probably at the G7 meeting. Maybe he will find a reason why he is not ready then either,” she said. “What we have seen is there is an understanding in his administration that withdrawing from the agreement is not the best and they would probably be better served to stay in.”
Trump announced that the U.S. would leave the pact less than two weeks later.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY