GELDOF’S EDICT: SPEND IT, NOW

Bob Geldof finally got fed up with famine finance foot-dragging.

So the British rock-star-cum-crusader delivered an ultimatum to the Washington, D.C.--based Jesuit priest that he put in charge of poring over Live Aid spending proposals: Spend it. All of it. Now.

There is an estimated $50 million in American pledges from last summer’s Live Aid concerts and virtually none of it has been spent.

“We have a deadline based on an agreement between Father (Harold) Bradley and Geldof,” said David Waters, a press spokesman for the Georgetown University priest.

“Geldof wants everything committed within six months,” Waters said. “ ‘Get this stuff out there’ is his view.”

“He wants to create no bureaucracy and he’s given us a deadline. We have to make our recommendations by Dec. 15. That may not be hard and fast. I think it’s more that he wants to encourage a sense of urgency and he doesn’t want to encourage people to wait around.”

The University Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance opened its Live Aid offices Oct. 15. Already the Rev. Bradley’s regular staff is being supplemented by federal employees with the Agency for International Development and the Department of the Treasury, plus 15 student volunteers, according to Waters. Their chief task is evaluating project proposals from agencies seeking money for African aid so that, by mid-December, Rev. Bradley can forward the most promising proposals to Live Aid trustees for final approval.

Until now, Live Aid has actually spent only a fraction of its concert earnings, even though some large sums have been given board approval

For example, the U.S. Committee for UNICEF was given approval last month to receive $3 million from the Live Aid/Band Aid Trust (the British arm of the U.S.’s Live Aid Foundation) to immunize a half million African children against measles, tetanus, tuberculosis, whooping cough, polio and diphtheria.

But UNICEF’s special projects director, Peter Hansen, told Calendar last week that most of the Live Aid money has been held up by disunity between the U.S. and British factions of Live Aid.

At one point earlier this month, according to one source, the schism had become so deep between Geldof and Live Aid Foundation president Mike Mitchell that Mitchell threatened to resign. Calendar made several attempts to contact Mitchell via his personal secretary during the past six weeks, but to no avail.

The Live Aid Foundation, headquartered in Marina del Rey, has jurisdiction over those contributions sent by Americans to a San Francisco post office box following the July 13 superconcerts. in London, Philadelphia and Australia. The Live Aid/Band Aid Trust, headquartered in London, has jurisdiction over pledges from the United Kingdom and much of Europe.

Mitchell told the media repeatedly that his deadline for announcing the audit of all income and expenses was October, but it hasn’t been done. Estimates have run as high as $70 million; most officials agree that the total is not less than $50 million.

Foundation spokeswoman Zoe Miller said that the U.S. audit has been completed but that Mitchell won’t release it until a similar audit of United Kingdom pledges has been finished.