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Boutros Boutros Ghali blames Israel for lack of peace in Middle East, paints a stark picture for future of Arab-Israeli relations; 'After 30 years, I don't even see one centimeter of progress' Smadar Peri Published: 11.09.07, 09:59 / Israel News From his spacious apartment overlooking the glamorous Dominique Street in Paris, Boutros Boutros Ghali launches an unprecedented offensive against Israel. It's hard to hear such severe criticism from one of the architects of Israel's first peace agreement—the 1977 Camp David Accords with Egypt—but Ghali has no intentions of hiding his anger with Israel behind diplomatic formalities. "After 30 years, I...

You're a 71-year-old man with diabetes, hypertension and a kidney transplant. You've been in federal lock-up since you were virtually abducted from a plane in Mexico City on a trip from Canada to Panama in January. Today you are facing up to five years in prison - which could be a life term - after a jury took less than a day to convict. And there's an additional felony charge with another five-year max looming in Washington DC. Do you sing? It's not too late for Tongsun Park. Although he blew his chance at a plea bargain, he can still...

AN AGENT from South Korea who established a “secret backchannel” between a former UN Secretary-General and Saddam Hussein’s regime asked Iraq for $10 million “to take care of some people”, a New York court was told. Iraq set aside $15 million for the bribery scheme and sent $3 million in cash to New York in the year the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme was set up, it was alleged. It also heard that Iraq’s UN ambassador at the time believed that some of the money was destined for Boutros Boutros Ghali, then Secretary-General, although the prosecutors did not suggest that any of...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq set aside $15 million (8 million pounds) 10 years ago to bribe or otherwise influence then-U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to shape the oil-for-food program to Saddam Hussein's liking, investigators said on Wednesday. Iraqi officials gave millions of that in cash in the mid- to late-1990s to middlemen who were supposed to bribe or influence Boutros-Ghali, according to the findings of the Independent Inquiry Committee led by Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. CASH MEANT TO ENSURE U.N. 'FLEXIBILITY'

IRAQ paid more than $US1 million ($A1.3 million) in cash to bribe former United Nations secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali but investigators said they had no evidence he ever received the money. The findings were contained in a 1000-page report by the UN-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee, set up to investigate the defunct $US64 billion ($A84 billion) oil-for-food humanitarian program for Iraq. Mr Boutros-Ghali was in office in 1996 when the program was created that allowed Iraq to sell oil in order to buy food, medicine and offset the impact of 1990 UN sanctions. During negotiations to set up the program, "the back...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations is studying whether it was appropriate for the top U.N. envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, U.N. officials said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park, a native of North Korea and citizen of South Korea who was also accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress. Strong is the U.N. point man on stalled six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to...

<p>Federal prosecutors investigating the Oil-for-Food scandal are focusing on a growing number of current and former U.N. officials, court documents show. Among those under scrutiny: ex-U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali and his aides. The documents were released last week along with criminal charges filed against South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, accused of receiving $2 million in secret payments from Iraq to lobby on Oil-for-Food. Some of the money, the Feds say, was to be used to "take care" of a senior U.N. official. Park also allegedly invested Iraqi money in a company owned by an "immediate family member" of another U.N. official. Investigators say a key event in the alleged scheme was a June 1993 meeting in Geneva between "U.N. Official #1" and two Iraqis. News reports show that a critical meeting on Iraq was held in Geneva at that time between Saddam Hussein sidekick Tariq Aziz and Boutros-Ghali. U.N. sources say this doesn't prove Boutros-Ghali's involvement. Boutros-Ghali couldn't be reached for comment; Park's lawyer says his client denies wrongdoing.</p>

Former United Nations chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali is blaming the oil-for-food scandal on "right-wing politicians" in the United States, saying they are merely using it as a tool to damage the world body's reputation. Reuters reports that Boutros-Ghali, who served as U.N. general secretary from 1991 to 1996, also has said current chief Kofi Annan should stay right where he is.

Boutros-Ghali 'implicates' Annan in growing scandal NEW YORK - ATTEMPTS by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to overcome a scandal that could threaten his position have been undermined by his predecessor, The Independent reports. Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was ousted after one term because of United States opposition to him, said he and Mr Annan were both responsible for the oil-for-food programme designed to ease the impact on Iraqis of sanctions against Saddam Hussein. Last week, an interim report into allegations of corruption found the US$67 billion (S$109 billion) programme had been beset by political favouritism and had suffered from...

New York (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The UN official investigation into the oil-for-food programme in Iraq shows that the UN official running the programme was involved in a kickbacks scheme. Paul Volcker, the former head of the US Federal Reserve who headed the panel of investigation, said that Benon Sevan, who ran the humanitarian programme, solicited and received allocations for a trading firm registered in Panama connected to the family of former Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali. “In making such solicitations, Mr Sevan created a grave and continuing conflict of interest. His conduct was ethically improper and seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations,”...

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 3 (AFP) - An independent inquiry into the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq questioned Thursday former secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali's choice of a French bank to handle the immense sums of money involved in the scheme. Boutros-Ghali selected the Banque National de Paris (BNP) in 1996 even though it was not the lowest bidder for the contract to manage the programme's escrow account, the inquiry committee said in an interim report. Moreover, neither Boutros-Ghali nor any other appropriate official justified in writing the rejection of the lowest acceptable bidder as being in the interests of the United...

DIPLOMATS who received money from the United Nations’ discredited oil-for-food programme in Iraq were "parasites" profiting from the misery of an impoverished nation, the country’s human rights minister claimed yesterday. Bakhtiar Amin said those responsible should be brought to justice and the money repaid to the Iraqi people. "It shows that some so-called dignitaries had not an iota of shame in their bones, no conscience and no morals," he said. "They profited as parasites on the misery of an impoverished nation." The £32 billion oil-for-food programme, which ran from December 1996 to November 2003, allowed Saddam Hussein’s government to sell...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Iraq called Friday for a widening of the investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food program and demanded the immediate return of money in the U.N. account that paid for administration of the humanitarian relief effort. Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie also reiterated the government's demand that the United Nations stop using oil-for-food money to pay for the independent investigation into the program led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. "It is outrageous that Iraqi funds were mismanaged and then we have to pay for finding out about the mismanagement," he told a news conference a...

In the hidden-behind-the-Iraqi-prison-abuse-story oil-for-food scandal, the plot, as they say, thickens. First came the shock that United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s son, Kojo was connected to the ill-fated program. According to the New York Post On-Line edition, family members of former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali are officers of a Panamanian-registered company in which Benon Sevan, a UN assistant Secretary General, appointed to administer the oil-for-food program, had a connection. The Post said it got its information about the Boutros-Ghali connection from Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British businessman and advisor to the Iraqi governing council. The oil-for-food program could totally annihilate...

Getting Rid of Boutros-Ghali by Stanley Meisler In the 1970s, when Kurt Waldheim was Secretary-General, reporters at the United Nations used to call him The Headwaiter. "He always stood there," recalled Don Shannon, the U.N. correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in those days, "as if he were wringing his hands on a towel, asking what he could do for the powerful countries." That kind of a scene would warm the hearts of American officials these days. Despite all the protests by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright that the United States will veto a second...

An important but little-noticed Federal lawsuit is scheduled to go to court in February. Nearly six years four agents of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Narcotics Investigation(BNI) filed a civil rights complaint in the US DIstrict Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The lawsuit alleged that "certain persons in the State Department and the CIA" had obstructed an investigation of the Dominican narcotics cartel, which controlledmuch of the trade in cocaine and heroin along the eastern seaboard. There is also evidence that the Dominican narcotics cartel may have indirectly financed the terrorist network that carried out the first World Trade...