[vacets-gen] [Kofi Annan's UN under a cloud]

[Hai Tran]

 Annan's UN under a cloud
New York correspondent Rodney Dalton
04dec04

THIS was supposed to be the week in which the UN applied the last bandage to the wounds of the Iraq invasion and mapped out the path to enduring relevance.

Kofi Annan, the UN's elegant Secretary-General, received a long-awaited report yesterday on how to make the UN Security Council more representative and cohesive. But his son Kojo had already stolen the limelight. 
In the latest blow to Annan's standing, it emerged that Kojo Annan had received payments from a Swiss company caught up in the snowballing oil-for-food scandal until February this year, long after the UN said he had severed ties with the company. 

Blind-sided by the Kojo revelations, the Secretary-General's office proved incapable of limiting the fallout. Annan is a depressed man walking, and the condition has spread through the halls of the UN's headquarters in New York. 

Annan's strongest supporters are feeling the most pain, fearing that the UN will be paralysed by a growing scandal that has presented its many critics in the US with more ammunition. 

"The timing is terrible this week when the panel's report is supposed to generate an imagery of change, of getting things right, dealing with problems of the past," Australia's UN ambassador John Dauth tells Inquirer. "This does not help." 

New York Times columnist William Safire was among the first to pull the trigger, calling on Annan to resign for "having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonour on the secretariat of the UN". 

In typical fashion, Annan calmly responded that he was disappointed that his son had not told him that he had received "non-compete" payments of $US2500 a month from Cotecna - a UN contractor - after he left its employ in 1998. 

Annan conceded the payments to his son created a "perception of conflict of interests and wrongdoing". 

The UN Security Council created the oil-for-food program in 1996 to alleviate the effects of sanctions on Iraqis by allowing Saddam Hussein's regime to sell oil to pay for food and medicines. 

Cotecna - a Geneva-based company - was hired in 1998 to confirm that goods purchased under the program had arrived in Iraq. The $US64 billion program continued until November 2003, six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq removed Saddam from power. 

Allegations of corruption in the handling of the program began emerging in January this year. Then, on April 7, the Government Accountability Office - an arm of the US Congress - testified that the Baghdad regime had skimmed 

$US10.1billion off the scheme, including $US5.7 billion via oil smuggled out of Iraq through countries such as Jordan and Turkey. 

Soon after, Annan chose former US central banker Paul Volcker to lead an independent panel to investigate allegations that UN officials had been involved in the widespread corruption. 

The stench surrounding the humanitarian program spread in October when the Duelfer report alleged that Benon Sevan, whom Annan appointed to oversee the program, along with Chinese, French and Russian companies, had received bribes in the form of oil vouchers. Sevan denied the charge and defiantly shows up for work despite holding no official position. 

The US Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, which has been conducting its own inquiry for seven months, upped the ante on November 15 when it estimated that Saddam had pocketed more than $US21 billion by abusing the scheme. 

Frustrated by his inability to access UN documents from Volcker, Senate committee chairman Norm Coleman - a go-getter with an eye for a headline - went on the attack on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal. 

"It's time for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign," Coleman wrote. 

He argued that most of the program's problems had occurred on Annan's watch and that the extent of the abuse would never be known while he remained in charge. 

"If this widespread corruption had occurred in any legitimate organisation around the world, its CEO would have been ousted long ago, in disgrace," Coleman argued. 

Nile Gardiner, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, thinks Coleman's call for Annan to step down is the first of many more to come. 

"There is a general consensus building on Capitol Hill that Annan has been stonewalling the investigation," says Gardiner. "[And] there is growing concern that the Volcker commission itself is a whitewash." 

No one has accused Annan of corruption. "It's really about his poor leadership, poor judgment, and his failure to act with regard to the biggest scandal in the history of the UN," says Gardiner. 

Asked to predict how the oil-for-food controversy would play out, he suggests Annan is likely to retire before his second five-year term as the world's top diplomat ends in 2006. 

If the personal toll becomes too difficult to bear, Annan might well jump, but there is no suggestion yet that he will be pushed out of the job. 

One of the Secretary-General's assets is his standing among member states. US lawmakers and the commentariat can call for Annan's head as much as they like but only he and the UN's 191 member states can determine his fate. 

Britain, Chile, Russia, Spain and the 54 African nations have all expressed their support for him despite misgivings over the revelations about his son. 

Britain's UN ambassador Emyr Jones Parry says his nation "gives its full support to the multilateral system, to the UN and to its Secretary-General". Australia shares this view. 

GeorgeW. Bush yesterday fended off questions about whether Annan should resign, saying he looked "forward to the full disclosure of the facts, a good, honest appraisal of that which went on". 

"And it's important for the integrity of the organisation to have a full and open disclosure of all that took place with the oil-for-food program," Bush said. 

It's hardly surprising that Annan has not received glowing messages of support from the Bush administration. A strong opponent of Bush's decision 

to invade Iraq, Annan put many noses out of joint in Washington by maintaining that the war was illegal and failing to send more UN staff to Iraq. 

The Kojo revelations played into the hands of Annan's critics, who have come out of the woodwork since the election. 

James Sutterlin, distinguished fellow of UN studies at Yale, is one observer who sees an element of payback for his opposition to the war in Annan's predicament. 

"I do believe there are those in the US who are seeking to utilise this in their continuing hostility, which to a certain extent in my opinion is irrational, toward the UN," says Sutterlin. 

He argues that the UN's critics are ignoring that fact that under the program the Iraqi regime had the authority to make contracts. The UN secretariat processed the orders and presented them to the sanctions committee of the Security Council. 

Many of these contracts were delayed - causing tension between the US on one side and France and Russia on the other - because the US was worried about dual-use items, not corruption. 

The UN Security Council was aware, and so now is the US Senate since the GAO report, that Saddam's regime smuggled oil by truck through Jordan and Turkey - both friends of the US. 

The oil-for-food scandal offers an insight into why China, France and Russia opposed the invasion of Baghdad, according to Gardiner. 

"These countries have a lot to hide, they all saw Saddam as an important client. It was not in their interests for Saddam to be removed from power," he says, concluding that Annan's inaction amounted to "a shameful appeasement of a brutal dictator". 

The surge in criticism of Annan has had the unintended effect of reminding UN staffers, who had been muttering about Annan's leadership themselves, that the real enemy is camped outside the UN building. 

They have rallied behind him with an expression of confidence, which Annan sorely needs.



=====
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.saigon.com/pipermail/vacets-gen/attachments/20041203/2c9feea6/attachment.html