Free Republic

There has rarely been a more outrageous piece of political grandstanding. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s recent article in The Washington Post was a pathetic attempt to claim credit for political and economic developments in Iraq. It was an extraordinary re-writing of history that would have made officials in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth blush. His op-ed made no mention of the role the United States and Britain played in liberating the people of Iraq, or of the presence of some 160,000 U.S., British and Coalition forces who are defending democracy and freedom in the country. This striking omission insults the...

"There's still more to come, there's still more to the story," a veteran U.S. diplomat told NewsMax regarding U.N. chief Kofi Annan's role in the ever-expanding Iraq Oil For Food scandal. The diplomat, closely tied with the world body's most influential members, said pressure is building for Annan to resign. "It is possible that the Secretary-General could, for the good of the organization, eventually offer his resignation," he told NewsMax's Stewart Stogel. But who would replace Annan? "Bill Clinton," the source said with a smile. The U.S. official admitted that Bill Clinton as Secretary General, while still a long shot,...

Europeans deny oil-for-food payoffs Senate panel alleges two gave support to Hussein for vouchers By John Leicester Associated Press May 13, 2005 PARIS -- Two European politicians on Thursday adamantly denied accusations from a U.S. Senate committee that Saddam Hussein's regime allocated them millions of barrels of Iraqi oil in exchange for their support. The denials came a day after the committee investigating corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food program released new evidence purporting to show that the two politicians, British lawmaker George Galloway and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, received vouchers for Iraqi oil in exchange for supporting...

Please forgive me if this post isn't in the correct place. I am a first-time poster - long-time reader. Lanny Davis representing Robert Parton? A Clinton advisor is representing the one man who could take Kofi out of the U.N.? I smell something bad here. Is this a way for Clinton to try to slide into secretary general - by using his own advisor to cut off Kofi's head? I'm confused. Again, I apologize if this post is incorrect. Please have mercy on the newbie!!!

UNITED NATIONS - The embattled former director of the scandal ridden Iraq Oil for Food Program has sent a letter with an ultimatum to the office of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Benon Sevan, a veteran Cypriot diplomat, now the target of several U.S. and U.N. investigations, has sent Annan a "demand" that the world body pay his mounting legal bills "or else." According to Anann chief of staff Mark Malloch Brown, the letter, written by Sevan's legal team, carried an implied threat of new public disclosures regarding embezzlement in the now defunct oil for food program. Sevan has given no indication...

NewsMax has learned that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has privately retained the services of celebrated Washington criminal defense attorney Greg Craig. The Annan move was first disclosed in a filing with the Paul Volcker panel released last month. The former Fed chairman currently heads an "independent" investigation into the activities of the scandal plagued U.N.-Iraq Oil-for-Food Program. Craig is perhaps best known for his defense of Bill Clinton during his Senate impeachment trial in 1999. He is also remembered as an attorney and "political" adviser to Juan Miguel Gonzalez, the father of "celebrated" Cuban shipwreck survivor, Elian. It is not...

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is a man in search of a legacy. A legacy, however, is something you build up over time, like an edifice carefully constructed, action by action, decision by decision. Ultimately, it adds up to a record for history to judge. Unfortunately for Mr. Annan, there is a very real possibility that his legacy at the helm of the United Nations will be an organization that has been riddled with corruption, financial scandals, mismanagement and outright abuse. In New York on Monday, Mr. Annan took steps to leave a more positive legacy that he may be hoping...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A key report on the Iraqi oil-for-food program next week is expected to clear U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan from personal wrongdoing but fault him for ignoring his son's work for a firm that sought a U.N. contract, The Wall Street Journal said on Friday. Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman appointed by Annan to investigate corruption in the program, is due to issue an interim report on Tuesday that will focus on whether the secretary-general influenced the bidding process in the U.N.-administered program, which ran from 1996 to 2003. A big problem for the...

The security of America and other wealthy countries will for the first time be declared a key priority for the United Nations under reforms designed to restore confidence in the crisis-ridden international body. The reforms, to be announced tomorrow by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, will be seen as a concession to Washington after repeated clashes with President George W Bush over US foreign policy, including the war in Iraq. The UN Secretariat promises a "real re-launch … a fundamental manifesto" after criticism of its performance since the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. Mark Malloch Brown,...

WASHINGTON — A former U.N. official who was fired after warning his superiors of "flagrant mishandling" of the U.N. oil-for-food program will be the star witness at a congressional hearing...... Dr. Rehan Mullick, a Pakistani national who worked as a U.N. research officer in Baghdad from 2000 to 2002, is expected to be the first U.N. insider to publicly detail mass corruption in the program when he testifies before the House International Relations Committee tomorrow. A spokesman for the committee said ......that Mullick "repeatedly warned his superiors in Baghdad and later in NY" that Saddam Hussein's regime was diverting humanitarian...

I like the United Nations. Sure, they’ve got their problems, but what large, multi-leveled bureaucracy doesn’t? And, like those other bureaucracies, it has its good and bad points. A few billion here or there will occasionally disappear. Folks like the Libyans and the Cubans get to sit in judgment of others’ human rights abuses. Millions are spent on fancy buildings and offices around the world in order to bring help to the planet’s suffering masses. Diplomatic immunity allows a few thousand parking tickets in New York City to go unpaid. Despots and thugs get to share the international stage with...

On January 24, the United Nations commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps and the holocaust during World War II. At this event, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proclaimed, "Such an evil must never be allowed to happen again." But it's hard to take Annan and the U.N. seriously when their lack of action regarding the genocide in Sudan speaks so loudly as to render Annan's words useless. To the 800,000 who were killed in 100 days in Rwanda in 1994, and the more than 70,000 who have been slaughtered in the Darfur region of Sudan,...

MUNICH, Germany (AP) - U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered support Sunday for reforms to strengthen the United Nations, but also had a world of personal appreciation for U.N. chief Kofi Annan. "I also thank him for giving my husband a new job," she said, smiling. Annan recently appointed former U.S. President Bill Clinton as a special U.N. envoy to countries hit by December's Indian Ocean tsunami. Rodham Clinton was among a group of U.S. senators attending an annual security conference in Munich, where Annan was the keynote speaker Sunday. She backed his call for an overhaul of the world...

UNITED NATIONS - As the United Nations' chief of staff attempted a charm offensive on Capitol Hill yesterday, legislators signaled they will deepen and diversify the various investigations of the organization and said that American funds might be withheld if significant changes fail to materialize at Turtle Bay. Chief of Staff Mark Malloch Brown met with a host of American legislators in an attempt to convince Washington that findings of the Volcker committee, named by Secretary-General Annan to investigate wrongdoings in the oil-for-food program, are being taken seriously and that major reforms are afoot. Prior to chairing his own oil-for-food...

Incompetence and corruption at the U.N. appears to be swirling around and around in ever-widening circles. The oil-for-food scandal continues to grow, which the U.N. insists is under investigation, led by Paul Volcker, who now, it has been revealed, has substantial business ties with several central figures in the investigation. Then there are the sexcapade scandals that seem to follow U.N. peacekeepers wherever they go. The peacekeepers didn't go to Rwanda or Sudan, while government-backed savages hacked to death nearly a million helpless people. And now, a top researcher for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has resigned, charging that...

Calls for Kofi Annan to resign his post as secretary-general of the United Nations continue to grow. The oil-for-food scandal expands with each new disclosure, and the once-secret sex scandals are now public knowledge. Annan's resignation, however, will not cure these ills; it will only mask the real problems, while providing the appearance of reform. Were Kofi to step down, U.N. critics would celebrate their victory, and the institution would go about selecting a new person to correct all the problems that have come to light. The spotlight would be focused on the new secretary-general, who would get a pass...

New York City is too good for the "privileged, pampered" bureaucrats of United Nations, notes Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine. Ship the corrupt globalists to the corrupt Third World, he urges in his column in the Jan. 10, 2005 issue. "The poverty and backwardness of Port-au-Prince, Haiti or Lagos, Nigeria or Dar es Salaam, Tanzania or Addis Ababa, Ethiopia would serve as daily reminders" of the taxpayer-supported U.N. parasites' "years-long record of murderous failure and moral turpitude," he observes. Forbes is, however, a realist. "It won't happen," he admits. After all, where would the internationalist fat cats dine and...

The U.S. is engaged in a bloody war in Iraq for the purpose of eliminating the remnants of a terrorist regime, foreign terrorists, and bringing democracy to Iraq and the region. It is a big gamble that has put radical Islam on the defensive around the world. But shocking evidence demonstrates that controversial former U.S. Marine and former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who now writes for the anti-American Arab "news" organization Al Jazeera, was involved in a controversial effort to stop the war by enlisting prominent personalities in a "peace" campaign.

If the United Nations fails to gain approvals to expand its headquarters in New York, will it be saying "Auf Wiedersehen"? That's "goodbye" in German, and at least one source close to the U.N. expansion project said talk has "been in the air" for several months about the possibility of using Bonn as a site for some U.N. offices should approval be withheld from plans to erect a 35-story office building near the U.N. campus during renovations of the Secretariat. A number of sources familiar with the United Nations said transfer of the General Assembly and other organs of the...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, visiting the United Nations, cautioned his Congressional colleagues to "take a deep breath" before making a political football out of the world body by withholding dues. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said he disapproved of moves by several Republicans to withhold U.S. payments unless the world body fully cooperates with Congressional probes into the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq. "I think we ought to take a deep breath. This is not a time to make a political football out of the U.N.," Leahy told reporters after seeing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "We need them...