UN Workers in Haiti Live on Luxury Cruise Ship

A Fox News report of April 8 notes that the UN is housing relief workers sent to Haiti to offer services following the nation’s devastating 7.0 earthquake on January 12 aboard two chartered luxury cruise ships. One of the ships has been dubbed the "Love Boat" by UN staff members.

The United Nations World Food Program announced on its website on March 19 that two UN-chartered passenger cruise ships, the Ola Esmeralda and the Sea Voyager, had docked in Port au Prince harbor.

But Fox noted that the website announcement did not disclose that the vessels were not intended to house homeless Haitian refugees, but would instead accommodate employees of the U.N. itself. The UN website also did not reveal that the cost of leasing the ships was $112,500 a day and that one of the vessels is owned by a company closely linked to the government of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

Yet another thing the the WFP failed to mention: Even U.N. staffers regularly refer to one of the ships as "the Love Boat" — an illusion to the old TV series about a cruise ship on which single passengers booked passage to look for romance.

When a Fox News reporter questioned Edmond Mulet, head of the Haiti peacekeeping contingent, about the organization’s judgement in housing so many U.N. relief workers in such luxurious surroundings while most residents of Port au Price are homeless, the official justified the decision as follows: “You have to be in good shape in order to help the Haitians.”

"It is the least we could do for them," said Mulet. "They are working 14, 16 hours a day. The place was pulverized. Living conditions are really appalling."

Fox News did some excellent research in determining that the registered owner of one of the two ships the WFP chartered, the Ola Esmeralda, is a Venezuelan company, Servicios Acuaticos de Venezuela, C.A., or Saveca. And Saveca, as stated on the company’s own website, is part of an "alliance," with Dianca, a Venezuelan shipyard, that is owned by the government of the Marxist Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

The entire Fox report, “With Haiti in Ruins, Some U.N. Relief Workers Live Large on 'Love Boat,’” which has links to the researcher’s sources, makes for interesting reading.

“The worst-kept secret in Haiti: the UN's cruise ship hotel,” another online article about the UN-charter cruise ships posted on April 7 by Terra Daily’s staff writers, referred to a small office located in the UN’s logistics base in Port au Prince, where UN staff can sign up to stay on the Sea Voyager for a “heavily subsidized” rate of 40 dollars a night, including breakfast and dinner.

"It's the best deal in town," the report quoted a UN worker who told AFP on condition of anonymity, who said the usual rate should be around 150 dollars.

A UN coordinator who moved to the Sea Voyager after her house was destroyed by the earthquake told AFP she was happy because she had stopped working endless hours and sleeping in her office and that:

"Obviously some people are complaining because it is a long way away, 40 minutes by bus, but it's great, how can we complain, we have air-con, we have food, the mosquitos are under control.”

The report quoted Richard Morse, the owner of Port-au-Prince's Hotel Oloffson, who gave the following opinioin:

"If the UN is living on a cruise ship, it is the perfect metaphor for how they are viewed here in the country. If they think quake refugees should be living on cruise ships, then they should get cruise ships for the Haitian people, that's all I'm saying. Unless of course I am misinterpreting this and they really are better than Haitians."

Sarah Muscroft, the deputy head of mission for the UN's Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), offered the official reason that the ships were being used to house UN staff — because member states insisted on safe housing for staff.

"That is the reason why there is a boat here because the member states have basically said you have to have our nationals who work for you in non-prefab buildings," she said.

The story is not so surprising, considering that the UN and its agencies have become well-funded bureaucracies and have become subject to the excesses characteristic of all such bureaucracies. One could imagine the uproar if members of Christian relief agencies wallowed in luxury while the poor peasants were housed in tents and packing crates.

But the greatest danger presented by the UN is not that it’s staff members may prefer to stay on “The Love Boat,” instead of a shanty in Port au Prince. It is that the world body’s members states (including the United States) have consistently surrendered more and more of their national sovereignty to the UN, including control of their own national defense.

The process can only be reversed by the world’s nations withdrawing from the UN. The impoverished refugees of the world could be better served by private and church-based relief agencies.

Warren Mass is editor of the Bulletin of The John Birch Society.

National Review: The U.N. 'Love Boat'

by BRETT D. SCHAEFER

EnlargeiStockphoto.com

The World Food Program has rented out two passenger ships to accommodate many U.N. staff members off the coast of Haiti. At $112,500 per day, how much of these costs are passed off onto the U.S., the largest contributor to WFP.

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April 13, 2010

In a story posted last week on Fox News's website, George Russell laid out one of the most outrageous examples of poor judgment and profligacy seen in recent years from a U.N. organization. As Russell reports, two passenger ships (the Ola Esmeralda and the Sea Voyager) have been rented by the World Food Program — a U.N. humanitarian-relief organization — for $112,500 per day for the purposes of "accommodation for many of the U.N.'s international staff" off the coast of Haiti. The ships are also available to NGO workers and dignitaries such as Brazilian president Luiz Inacio da Silva, who recently visited the impoverished and earthquake-ravaged island. The total cost of renting these ships is projected to be over $10 million for the first 90 days. U.N. staff call one of the ships the "Love Boat."

Sensing that the news might not be received well, WFP quickly pulled down its own article (complete with pictures) about the ships. Russell preserved the story, however, and does a wonderful job of exposing the many questions surrounding WFP's decision to rent these ships. Among the highlights:

WFP is being overcharged, because the projected expense is millions of dollars more than what the ships would have been likely to earn through normal operation.

The Ola Esmeralda is owned by a Venezuelan company with close ties to Pres. Hugo Chavez.

Also included in the story is a revealing insight into the U.N. mindset. Russell asked Edmond Mulet, special representative in Haiti of the U.N. secretary general and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission (MINUSTAH) in the country, about the decision. Mulet's answer, spread through several quotes in the story, was shocking: "It is the least we could do for them. They are working 14, 16 hours a day. The place was pulverized. Living conditions are really appalling. . . . [When] oxygen masks come down in a falling plane, the first thing you do is put them on yourself. You have to be in good shape in order to help the Haitians."

Apparently, a visit to the Lido Deck is just the thing for staying in "good shape."

Russell reports that if the two boats are fully booked, the cost to WFP is $181.81 per passenger per day for the Sea Voyager and $154.25 per passenger per day for the Ola Esmeralda. But U.N. staffers get to stay on the ships for $40 per day, and those participating in the U.N. peacekeeping mission get to stay for $20 per day. So WFP, even if the ship is full, provides each U.N. "passenger" a direct subsidy of up to $161.81 per day. But WFP doesn't really pay for it, of course; the taxpayers in the countries who contribute to WFP do. In 2008, the U.S. gave over $2 billion to WFP — about 40 percent of its total budget.

And as if that weren't enough, American taxpayers pay roughly a quarter of the expense of U.N. operations and staff salaries — expenditures that include a Daily Subsistence Allowance for U.N. staff of $244 dollars. Reasonable people might wonder, given that their daily allowances would more than cover it, why WFP is not charging U.N. staff the full cost of staying on the ships rather than $40 or $20 per day. Such is the regard U.N. agencies have for our hard-earned tax dollars.

This is just the latest in a series of missteps by WFP. For instance, according to a March 2010 report by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia, "up to half of the food aid intended for needy Somalis is routinely diverted," and WFP food-aid delivery was dominated by three individuals (and their families and associates) linked to "arms sales and insurgent connections." A February 2010 story, also by Russell, detailed how WFP's relief effort in Afghanistan was inflated, with some outside experts saying that “some of the costs are more than 100 percent higher than they need to be."

Since the U.S. is by far the largest contributor to the World Food Program, Congress should take a keen interest in its activities in Haiti and elsewhere.

In Haiti for UN, Mystery of Bolduc's Quitting, Love Boat Stonewall

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 10 -- In promoting its work in Haiti, the UN veers from loud bragging to quiet resignations. This last appears to be the case of Kim Bolduc.

She had been in Haiti for less than two months when the UN thrust her forward as its public face after the earthquake. Senior UN officials heaped praise on her, she appeared by video hook up to reporters at UN headquarters in New York, and was quoted gushing about how much she loved working in Haiti for the UN. Then, very quickly thereafter, she quit.

Inner City Press was told this by sources, and asked. Earlier this month, the UN terse confirmed that Ms. Bolduc's assignment was over. On April 8 and 9, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's associate spokesman Farhan Haq to explain her resignation and where she had gone next.

"Ask UNDP," Haq said. But since the most senior UN officials in New York had praised Bolduc, Inner City Press asked again. Video here. Again, the buck was passed to UNDP, which in substance answered that Ms. Bolduc

"now feels that the time had come for new colleagues to come in to carry forward the efforts underway to help rebuild Haiti. Interim arrangements are in place while a permanent replacement is found for the Secretary-General to name a new Deputy Special Representative."

The "interim arrangements" were not specified. The other DSRSG, Tony Banbury, was seen by Inner City Press on April 8 speaking at length on the corner of 45th Street and Second Avenue with the chief of UN Peacekeeping Alain Leroy, just before he went on ten days of leave. (While Haq refused to answer who would be in charge during Leroy's absence, Inner City Press later informally learned: Dmitry Titov, now Mister Rule of Law.)

Back in October 2009, ICP exclusively reported that UN's (now-destroyed) Headquarters in Haiti was leased on the basis of a noncompetitive procurement in a contract which cost$94,000 per month.

While that figure seemed a bit extravagant, it has since been exposed that the UN is now paying $112,500 per day for two cruise ships to accommodate UN staff.

Cabin on Sea Voyager, rented by UN for its (international) Haiti staff

WFP originally put out a press release describing these accommodations. But in a mysterious way repeated frequently by the UN agencies when it realizes the potential liability of its announcements, that story was disappeared; removed from the internet. WFP spun: "Photos, text and video material are regularly being added and removed from WFP's Web site as stories are refreshed, restructured and replaced." Thankfully, the original story was saved; we are linking here.

On April 8, ICP asked UN spokesman Farhan Haq about the Love Boat story, specifically about how the procurement was done. Haq refused to answer any questions about the Love Boat contract, and passed the ball over to UNDP, despite WFP's lead role.

Here is what UNDP's spokesman had to say -- he asked that it be published in full:

As you can imagine, working conditions in Haiti are not easy. As result of the earthquake, the main UN building was flattened, killing more than 100 of our colleagues, and the UNDP building, while still standing, is deemed unsafe. Our staff has been working out of the logistics base near the airport. Some of our staff permanently assigned to Haiti can not return to their homes because they have been damaged or destroyed and there is also a lack of available housing for new arrivals. Therefore, some UNDP staff is staying tents at a UN camp, some are sleeping in their offices at the logistics base and others are sleeping in cabins on the ships, often two to a room. It should be noted that the ship has basic amenities but is by no means a "cruise ship". It is intended simply to house staff safely so they can perform their duties. About 12 people with UNDP contracts in Haiti, out of a total of approximately 200, are using the maritime accommodations at any one time.

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, the UN needed to find quickly accommodations to handle the surge of UN personnel coming in to the country in a way that obviously did not tax an already strained housing sector. The accommodations were procured by WFP for the benefit of the UN system. The cost recovery from WFP is being calculated.

While it is unlikely that there will actually be any "cost recovery" in the meaningful sense of the phrase, we will continue to monitor how and why the UN got into this arrangement, and more broadly how it it is putting donor funds to use in Haiti. Watch this site.

Edmond Mulet says: UN should take care of its personnel before caring of Haitians

"These two boats ("Ola Esmeralda and "Sea Voyager") are for the United Nations in Haiti like Oxygen masks come down in a falling plane. The first thing you do is put them on yourself"

"You have to be in good shape in order to help the Haitians"

"Haitian civilians .....understand"

The U.N. is spending over $10 million to house some of its Haiti relief workers on a pair of chartered cruise ships

Welcome to the "Love Boat," a lavish chartered cruise ship where many U.N. relief workers are living while they stay in Haiti's ruined capital of Port au Prince, where most residents are homeless. The U.N. is paying over $10 million to rent a pair of ships, because "you have to be in good shape in order to help the Haitians," a senior U.N. official told Fox News.

With Haiti in Ruins, Some U.N. Relief Workers Live Large on 'Love Boat'

International Shipping Partners

The lavish Harbor Lights Lounge aboard the Sea Voyager, a cruise ship chartered by the U.N.'s World Food Program to house some of its relief workers in Haiti.

For the United Nations World Food Program, it was a moment of satisfaction: the U.N.'s flagship relief agency announced on its Web site on March 19 that two gleaming passenger ships had docked in ravaged Port au Prince harbor.

What the Web site announcement did not disclose was that the vessels were intended to house not homeless Haitian refugees, but employees of the U.N. itself. Nor did it publicize the cost of leasing the ships: $112,500 a day. Nor did it mention that one of the vessels is owned by a company closely linked to the government of Venezuelan strongman President Hugo Chavez.

Another thing not mentioned: Even U.N. staffers regularly refer to one of the ships as "the Love Boat."

Then the WFP apparently had second thoughts about the whole announcement.

A slideshow photo essay had shown the two vessels, the Ola Esmeralda and the Sea Voyager, at berths near the earthquake-shattered Haitian capital. Then the photos and the story disappeared, not only from the home page but apparently from the WFP's public news story Web archive. The official explanation from a WFP spokesman: "Photos, text and video material are regularly being added and removed from WFP's Web site as stories are refreshed, restructured and replaced."

Click here to see the original story.

For whatever reason, WFP had decided that less was more when it came to publicizing the presence of the two vessels.

But that did not change the fact of their presence. And even while deep-sixing its previous publicity, the use of the ships as accommodation for many of the U.N.'s international staff was passionately defended in a telephone interview with Fox News by Edmond Mulet, head of the Haiti peacekeeping contingent, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, and also Special Representative in Haiti of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. (Ban's Special Envoy to Haiti is former President Bill Clinton.)

"It is the least we could do for them," Mulet, a former Guatemalan diplomat, told Fox News about the U.N. staffers. "They are working 14, 16 hours a day. The place was pulverized. Living conditions are really appalling."

In a city where much of the housing was destroyed by the earthquake, U.N. staffers' amenities aboard the two passenger ships include laundry service, catered food, hot showers and beds with fresh linens for subsidized rates of $40 per day for WFP staffers, and half that for officials of MINUSTAH.

Accommodation aboard the two ships could best be described as comfortable if not luxurious — and far better than conditions a few hundred yards from their moorings, where hundreds of relief workers, some 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers and police, and huge numbers of Haiti's 9.5 million people are sleeping in tents or on bare floors — or worse — after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

Mulet says the use of the shipboard cabins by U.N. personnel is "strictly voluntary," and many decide not to use them. "Not all the cabins are full," he declares. (Mulet himself says he lives in the U.N.'s major military camp with the predominately Brazilian peacekeeping forces.)

Moreover, others aid workers in Haiti, including those who work for non-government organizations, are also free to sign up for shipboard space, he says: everything is on a "first come, first served" basis.

Additionally, the ships are used as reception areas for visiting dignitaries, including, recently, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio ("Lula") da Silva.

The mass of Haitian civilians, however, are not among those invited to stay. "I think they understand," says Mulet. "They have gone through the same trauma themselves. They know we are there to provide shelter for them."

Mulet compares the situation to what occurs when "oxygen masks come down in a falling plane. The first thing you do is put them on yourself."

"You have to be in good shape in order to help the Haitians."

Even in some official documents, U.N. staffers refer to the Sea Voyager, the first of the vessels to reach Port-au-Prince, as the Love Boat.

A good name for the other vessel, the Ola Esmeralda, might be the Double Your Love Boat, not for its luxuries, but for its cost to WFP. While not luxury liners — the Ola Esmeralda is a reconditioned, 40-year-old passenger ship — neither of the two vessels could be called a cheap date.

The WFP is renting the 286-foot, 5,000-ton Sea Voyager (capacity: about 220 passengers) for $35,000 per day, plus a whopping additional $5,000 daily for fuel. Total for 90 days: $3,600,000.

If every cabin were full, the average daily cost to the U.N. for the fully-loaded Sea Voyager would be about $181.81 per passenger — minus the $40 or $20 paid by each U.N. staffer who stays in a cabin.

The 480-foot, 11,000-ton Ola Esmeralda — which now operates directly under the administrative auspices of MINUSTAH — is renting for $72,500 per day, all costs included.

Total for 90 days: $6,525,000. Average cost per passenger per day (the vessel accommodates 470 plus crew): about $154.25, minus the staff contributions.

Over the lives of their respective 90-day initial contracts, that brings the total outlay for the ships to $112,500 per day, or $10,125,000, minus the staff shares.

Each of the boats also has a number of single-month renewal options in its contract, which will push those totals higher. A WFP spokesman says, however, that the organization's aim is to end its charter of Sea Voyager at the end of April. That would bring the total rental cost of that vessel to $4,800,000, minus staff contributions.

In the case of the Ola Esmeralda, no such end date has been set so far.

How expensive are those charter rates? When compared to the cost of the MINUSTAH peacekeeping operation, they may not seem huge. Even before the earthquake, MINUSTAH was one of the U.N.'s more expensive peacekeeping operations, with a budget estimated to exceed $611 million this year. Post-earthquake, the MINUSTAH budget for its next financial year is expected to rocket past $700 million.

In the case of Sea Voyager, though, it is slightly less expensive than it might be otherwise. According to Niels-Erik Lund, president of International Shipping Partners of Miami, the firm that brokered the Sea Voyager charter with WFP, his firm is donating commissions and technical management fees of $25,000 per month back to WFP as relief aid for Haiti.

Fox News was unable to determine whether a similar arrangement exists for Ola Esmeralda.

According to the rate card offered by the company that operates Ola Esmeralda, when filled to capacity in the most expensive cruise season, the ship earns about 334,000 Venezuelan bolivars, the local currency unit, per day. At official exchange rates, that would amount to about $77,800 — or slightly more than its WFP paycheck — provided that Ola Esmeralda could enjoy 100 percent occupancy at home.

Click here to see the rate card | Click here to see the total number and types of cabins involved

Translation to U.S. dollars at official exchange rates are misleading, however; the Chavez government maintains an artificially high exchange rate to keep down local inflation, among other things. At the unregulated (or black market) rate, the bolivar buys far fewer dollars.

Using that unregulated rate, Ola Esmeralda in high cruise season would earn about $49,124 per day — far less than the WFP is paying.

Click here to see Ola Esmeralda's domestic revenue potential.

But even those calculations are deceptive. In the 90 days of the initial WFP contract, only 13 days (or 14.44 percent) are part of Ola Esmeralda's high season. The remaining 85.45 percent would earn the vessel only $55,403 per day, at the most expensive low-season fares, and the official dollar-bolivar exchange rate. Total revenues: about $66,600 daily — still not bad.

But at the more realistic unregulated exchange rate, the revenues at home would be much lower: about $42,000 per day — or about $2,737,500 less than WFP is paying over the same 90 days. And there is no guarantee it would have such 100 percent occupancy back in Venezuela.

Plus, WFP pays in hard currency, not bolivars.

The question is, who is getting the U.N.'s money?

According to a WFP spokesman, the owners of both ships are American firms — which is true as far as it goes. In the case of Sea Voyager, according the International Shipping Partners' Lund, the company that owns the vessel is Voyager Owner LLC of Miami. The company that controls that firm, he says, is an international firm, the Clipper Group. Once based in Switzerland, the Clipper Group is now headquartered in the Bahamas.

In the case of Ola Esmeralda, the ownership issue is even more interesting. The ship owner, according to WFP, is a Miami company called Lighthouse Ship Management LLC. But in fact, as of the end of January 2010, the registered owner of the Ola Esmeralda, according to official ship registries, is a Venezuelan company, Servicios Acuaticos de Venezuela, C.A., or Saveca.

Click here to see the Ola Esmeralda's registration.

On its Web site, Saveca claims to be a firm "dedicated to the design, modification, set up and operation of activities related to passenger transportation, floating lodging facilities and similar activities." Its main focus, according to the Web site, is "service and support vessels for the oil industry and hospital or medical assistance vessels."

Some of its top officials, however, have different backgrounds. Three of five senior Saveca officials named on the corporate Web site are retired Venezuelan naval or Merchant Marine officers.

Saveca claims on another page on the Web site to have close ties, an "alliance," with a Venezuelan shipyard, Dianca, that is owned by the radically anti-American government of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. The president of Saveca, Tomas A. Marino Blanco, a formal naval officer, is described, among other things, as a former international marketing and development manager of Dianca.

According to a Venezuelan who was formerly involved in the country's port activities, Dianca is a state-owned company with a "very murky character," in a country rife with cronyism and political patronage. According to the Venezuelan source, Dianca has long had close ties with the military.

It is now directly owned, according to its Web site, by a combination of the vociferously left-wing Chavez government and PDVSA, the nationalized Venezuelan oil company that is the source of much of the Chavez government's revenues and another alleged font of cronyism and patronage.

The Saveca Web site does not directly claim that the company owns Ola Esmeralda. But another Venezuela Web site, OlaCruises.com, which does make that claim, also notes in small print that the company involved, Ola Cruises, is a "division owned and operated by Saveca."

So who is actually getting the U.N.'s gusher of ship-charter money? In response to questions from Fox News, a WFP spokesman who named Ola Esmeralda's owner as Lighthouse Ship Management LLC, also said that theOla Esmeralda charter was the first time the relief agency had ever struck a supply contract with Lighthouse.

Lighthouse appears to be what is known in maritime terms as the "disponent owner" — in most cases a middleman who has rented a boat without crew, catering or services from its legal owner — a "bare-boat charter" — then added passenger services, and re-chartered the vessel. (The crew and services could also, of course, be rented separately from the same original owner.)

Lighthouse made its first move toward getting the contract via yet another intermediary, a New Jersey-based ship brokerage named Intercontinent Chartering Corporation, or ICC. ICC is one of a dozen "panel brokers" that have long-term relationships with the World Food Program to meet its shipping needs — almost all of which are for bulk cargo vessels.

ICC vice president Jan Kruse, who says he has executed "hundreds" of contracts for WFP over his professional career, says WFP passenger charters are so rare that he can never recall the organization getting involved in passenger charters of this kind before. When WFP put out the request, he and other panel brokers both advertised the opportunity and put out the word through their contacts in the wider ship-brokering community.

In the case of Lighthouse, Kruse says, ICC was approached by another ship broker with the offer of Ola Esmeralda. He declined to name the broker. It was among ten ships, he said, that were eventually offered to WFP before the U.N. agency decided on Esmeralda. Kruse's firm had nothing to do with the final choice.

Despite WFP's assertion of Lighthouse's ownership of Esmeralda, in a telephone interview from Venezuela with Fox News, Marino Fois, general manager of Saveca, affirmed what ship registries attest: that "we are the owner" of Ola Esmeralda. Fois added that the ship is "under the management of Lighthouse Ship Management."

He referred all further questions about the ship and its contractual arrangements to Lighthouse Ship Management, and particularly to one of its officials, Fredy Dellis.

Corporate documents in the U.S. reveal that Lighthouse Ship Management's address is in suburban Miami. In fact, it has the same residential address as that of Fredy Dellis, described as one of the company's "member managers."

Dellis, a native of Belgium, is also chairman and CEO of another firm, Bloomsbury Properties International LLC, with an address that is the same as his residential address. Bloomsbury's business is described on its Web site as the "sales and marketing of high-end, luxury residences around the world," and its Web site displays properties in the Caribbean and Italy.

But Dellis also knows passenger shipping. The Web site describes him as "boasting extensive experience in the management of many international companies," and among the experience he cites is a stint as CEO of ResidenSea Ltd., a company that sold luxury condominium-style residences aboard a 630-foot Norwegian cruise ship named The World to wealthy Europeans and Americans.

According to various press reports, the World project ran into early financial problems, and Dellis eventually left the company. (The World, however, was successfully completed before his departure, and still offers floating luxury residences for sale or rent.)

Fox News sent questions to Dellis at his Bloomsbury contact numbers via e-mail and fax about Lighthouse Ship Management and its relationship to the Ola Esmeralda, Saveca, and the World Food Program, but received no reply. Voicemail messages left at his Bloomsbury number were not answered.

According to WFP, Ola Esmeralda was "the most cost effective in terms of price per cabin" among the ten ships that the organization considered for the Haiti mission.

In fact, both Esmeralda and Sea Voyager, a WFP spokesman said, "offered the best rate on a cost per cabin basis for the numbers of staff that needed to be accommodated."

And, the spokesman declared, "the intention is to end the charter arrangements as soon as suitable landside accommodation is identified."

Meantime, the $112,500-a-day clock is ticking, alongside the pier that links the Love Boat and the Ola Esmeralda to a paper trail that extends across the Caribbean, to Venezuela.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.