Oil-for-food probe: U.N. failures let Saddam pocket $10.2 billion

Reuters U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan said he accepted the criticism but will not resign.

UNITED NATIONS - A yearlong investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food program issued a strong indictment of the United Nations and its top leadership Wednesday, concluding that they tolerated corruption and allowed Saddam Hussein's government to pocket $10.2 billion.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the findings "deeply embarrassing to all of us" and said he accepted the criticism leveled at him personally. But he said he had no intention of resigning.

The committee's five-volume, 1,036-page report concludes that those responsible for managing the $64 billion oil-for-food program — both U.N. member states and the world body's staff — failed the ideals of the United Nations and ignored clear evidence of corruption and waste.

Presenting the report at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, who chaired the committee, said: "Our assignment has been to look for mis- or mal-administration in the oil-for-food program and for evidence of corruption within the U.N. organization and by contractors. Unhappily we found both."

"In essence, the responsibility for the failures must be broadly shared, starting, we believe, with member states and the Security Council itself," he said.

The powerful 15-member council came in for stinging criticism because its main oil-for-food committee often ignored evidence of corruption, while some council members condoned oil smuggling to Iraq's neighbors.

The report does not say why the corruption was overlooked but notes that Russia was one of the nations that long blocked efforts to probe the claims. Russian companies were involved in oil-for-food and the country was a leading proponent of lifting the U.N. sanctions.

The report criticized the almost total lack of oversight of the program by the secretary-general and Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, who was the direct boss of Benon Sevan, the program's executive director now being investigated for allegedly accepting kickbacks. It issued "adverse findings" against all three.

The report said it found no evidence to support charges that Annan influenced a contract awarded to Cotecna Inspection Services, the Swiss company for which his son, Kojo, had worked.

The committee said it also found no evidence that Kofi Annan knew about the contract, but did find instances where Kojo Annan tried to influence it with calls to the United Nations procurement office. It also said that Kojo Annan exploited his father's name without his father knowing it.

The oil-for-food program was established to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The report criticized the way the program was created in 1996 by then-U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Saddam was allowed to choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods., which he used to curry favor by awarding oil contracts to officials who opposed the sanctions.

Lax oversight allowed Saddam's regime to pocket $1.8 billion in kickbacks in the awarding of contracts during the program's operation from 1997 to 2003, the committee said.

The smuggling of Iraqi oil outside the oil-for-food program in violation of U.N. sanctions poured much more money — $8.4 billion — into Saddam's coffers during the same period.

One way to comprehend how far down the porcelain facility the UN now is, is to think through the reaction of Kofi Annan to this report. This was the largest corruption scandal in the history of the human race. Most of his associates, and his son (to the tune of $750,000), were involved in it. And this happened on his watch.

Any leader in any public or private position would, if faced with these facts, either resign or be fired/removed from office. But Kofi thinks he can ride this out and survive. Why?

Two reasons, I think. First, this miserable excuse for either a leader or an honest man has been taking Clinton lessons (him and her). Deny, deny, deny, and count on the disaster to blow over. But the second reason is more important here. I assume that the UN Charter has some mechanism for removing a Secretary General from office.

Even if it is only a 51% vote by the General Assembly, it won't happen. Regardless of the facts, the African ambassadors won't vote to remove because "he's our guy." The Arab ambassadors won't because "the US wants him out." The communist and socialist ambassadors, and a fair number of the European ones, won't because "that will embarrass the US and take them down a peg."

Annan is not resigning because he wants the job, the income and the "prestige." Plus, he has no shame. Plus, there is little chance the UN will throw him out. Lastly, Annan doesn't care what harm he does to the UN by staying there and stinking up the place.

We should be grateful, however. The longer Annan stays, the longer that Ambassador Bolton can skewer the UN with increasing support from the Congress and the American public. It will also take the wind out of the sails of lib-Dems who claim that problem [INSERT NAME] can/should be turned over to the UN.

This dark cloud has a silver lining.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column: "The Constitution is Finished: Not the US One, the Atlanta One"

The U.N. and Annan reflect the coruption of it's membership. They like a leader who looks the other way.

The msm can't wait to bury this and get on with full time U.S. bashing.

________________________________________________________

Christian Science Monitor - September 08, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0908/p03s01-wogi.html

Oil-for-food report urges reforms at UN

A probe of the Iraq scandal details flaws in UN oversight, casting a shadow on Annan.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK - A report probing the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq has concluded that either the UN must address the management flaws that allowed shortcomings to fester, or the world's premier international organization could lose what legitimacy it has in addressing global security challenges.

The findings, which were issued Wednesday, follow more than a year's investigation into the ambitious UN effort to aid the Iraqi people and stifle the regime of Saddam Hussein. The report sets out a list of reforms - such as creating a position of chief operating officer and a strong new independent auditing board - to avoid the kind of corruption and big-bureaucracy inefficiencies that marked the $64 billion program.

What remains in the balance now is whether the oil-for-food spotlight will shine the way to necessary changes or make an already difficult road impossible. In addition, the report casts a shadow over UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as he has sought a broad vision of UN reform, and it raises doubts over whether he will be able to hold on through his term, which ends in December 2006.

"Reform is needed, and is needed now," said Paul Volcker, chairman of the UN-named Independent Inquiry Committee, at a press conference Wednesday. "It's not just one program.... One has to look at the whole organization."

Wednesday's presentation is the fourth and most comprehensive by the committee headed by Mr. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman. Another report, due out in a month, is expected to list specific companies, including American ones, that participated in the corruption by providing kickbacks to Iraqi and program officials.

The current report comes just as the 191 member countries of the UN are debating a set of reforms to be taken up at an unprecedented international summit at the UN next week. While that might seem like fortuitous timing, experts say that it may only further muddy an already turbulent situation.

"All this is going to do is underscore the folly of those UN officials, starting with Kofi Annan, who want to change the topic from the UN's performance and reform to the objective of solving global poverty," says Joshua Muravchek, an expert in the UN at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "That strategy is elegant and intelligent, because who's in favor of poverty? But I don't think it's going to wash."

Indeed, the report, which contains five parts and totals more than 1,000 pages, lays partial blame on Secretary-General Annan for poor management of the program. Perhaps his shortcoming - and one reflective of the UN's overall problems - is that he didn't understand the depth of need for management reform, UN analysts say.

"One more time, the secretary-general is out to lunch. He doesn't seem to understand the process," says Edward Luck, a longtime UN expert at Columbia University in New York. Noting that it was Annan who "loaded up" the reform process with a long list of issues unrelated to the management problem, Mr. Luck says, "There are real questions about whether or not he remains in office."

But the report has criticism for others, too. It cites past UN officials and Security Council members, including Russia and France, for allowing conditions that permitted corruption to deepen over the program's seven-year life span.

While critical of those directly involved in corruption, the report does not let the United States off the hook. It faults the US for overlooking the smuggling of Iraqi oil into Iraq's neighboring countries, including Jordan.

Still, the report does not link Annan to a contract awarded to a Swiss company that employed his son Kojo - one of the key unanswered elements that critics have been watching.

The inquiry has also yielded positive findings. It concludes that the oil-for-food program largely achieved its two goals: to feed the Iraqi people with Iraq's own oil money and to prevent Mr. Hussein from rebuilding a military that could threaten the region.

"The fact is that the US government and others were well aware the program had these weaknesses, yet [they] retained it because it continued to serve its basic purpose," says James Dobbins, an international security expert at the RAND Corp. in Arlington, Va., who has served in both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Mr. Dobbins says there is "definitely room for improvement in UN management." But he also says that the virulent American criticism of the UN incited by the oil-for-food problems overlooks the fact that neither US nor UN money was lost in the fraud.

"It's important we remember it was all Iraqi money," Dobbins says. He also maintains that the extent of fraud and corruption was relatively limited, given the mammoth size of the program.

Still, some members of Congress have already called on Annan to resign. And the House of Representatives has voted to cut US funding for the UN in half if certain management reforms are not accomplished.

The Bush administration has not favored either Annan's resignation or the funding cut, but most analysts see US pressure on the UN rising - with uncertain consequences for the international institution. The UN requires US leadership in order to function, experts say, but at the same time, America's traditional disregard of the organization may doom its ability to reform.

As for such reforms, Mr. Muravchek of the American Enterprise Institute doubts that the creation of a chief operating officer position, for example, would have much impact. "We've seen that kind of thing before," he says, citing the creation - at US insistence - of an assistant secretary-general for management in the 1990s.

That didn't solve the problem, he says, arguing, "I don't see why this new position would."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.