Oil for Memories

Opinion Journal ^ | April 21, 2004 | Claudia Rosett

[BMC1]

Oil for Memories How the U.N. can begin paying its debt to Iraq's people.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT Wednesday, April 21, 2004 12:01 a.m.

Having helped sustain and humor the tyranny and fraud of Saddam Hussein for years via the massively corrupt Oil-for-Food program, the United Nations has for the past year been seeking a new role for itself in Iraq. Presiding over the legitimation of a new Iraqi government, which seems to be the current grand ambition, is not a good place for the U.N. to start. At the very least, a project of such complexity, requiring the highest possible degree of integrity, needs to wait until the various investigations now in motion, or about to begin, have reported back. We need some better explanation of how the U.N., charged with overseeing the $100 billion-plus Oil-for-Food program, allowed Saddam to filch at least $10 billion, peddle influence possibly with the U.N. itself, set up front companies, procure clandestine arms, fund the regime's murderous security services, and so on. It would also be valuable to have some clear idea of how the U.N. proposes to reform its own deeply entrenched patterns of privilege and secrecy, to prevent its future collusion in such abuses, or in other wrongdoing to which the current system of patronage and confidentiality now lends itself.

Before the U.N. again goes about the business of trying to supervise anyone else, It would be vital to see real reforms not simply discussed but genuinely carried out. Although, given the pace and zeal with which such U.N. figures as Secretary-General Kofi Annan, or the veto-wielding French and Russian missions, approached the prospect of even inquiring into Oil-for-Food, any genuine reform at the UN could take a while. Perhaps by the time the grandchildren of today's youth in Iraq are running for office in routinely democratic elections, the U.N. will have rearranged itself as an institution qualified to advise them on the process.

But in the meantime, is there anything the U.N. might usefully do in Iraq? Well, yes. There's one thing that leaps to mind. It has to do with Saddam-generated cash still on tap at the U.N., and a project in need of funding in Baghdad that would genuinely help spell the beginning of a healthy, post-Saddam identity for Iraq.

Recall that during the Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996-2003, the U.N. Secretariat collected some $1.4 billion in commissions from Saddam, to cover the costs of administering Oil-for-Food. It turns out, as U.N. Controller Jean-Pierre Halbwachs confirmed to me earlier this month, that left over from these commissions, the U.N. Secretariat still has in its coffers some $100 million. This, Mr. Halbwachs explained, is at the moment being held against potential liabilities arising from the terrorist bombing last August of the U.N. offices in Iraq.

Given that the independent report last October on the U.N.'s security systems in Baghdad found the entire U.N. security apparatus "dysfunctional," and given that the dysfunction was so egregious that the U.N. recently fired the official in charge, it seems strange to reserve that $100 million to help the U.N. potentially cover the cost of its own grievous mistakes. That money was meant to help provide for the betterment of the 26 million citizens of Iraq, not insure the U.N. against its own malfunctions.

[GailA]

MASTER LIST OIL FOR FOOD SCANDAL