Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, recently described the findings of the investigation into the Iraq oil-for-food scandal as “painful” and “embarrassing” and underlined an urgent need for reform of the world organisation.
Annan accepted personal responsibility, but made it clear he was not going to resign. He was on Wednesday formally presented with the 820-page report of Paul Volcker, head of the inquiry, during a meeting of the Security Council.
Volcker told the council: “Our assignment has been to look for mis-or maladministration in the oil-for-food programme and for evidence of corruption within the UN organisation and by contractors. Unhappily we found both.”
The United States administration, which is hostile to Annan and the UN in general, joined in the criticism. John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN and a long-time critic of the organisation, said: “This report unambiguously rejects the notion that business as usual at the UN is acceptable.”
Bolton added: “We need to reform the UN in a manner that will prevent another oil-for-food scandal. The credibility of the UN depends on it.”
As well as criticising Annan, the inquiry blamed the permanent members of the security council, including Britain, for taking a lax approach to the programme.
The oil-for-food scheme was set up in 1996 to allow Saddam Hussein to sell oil in return for food for an Iraqi population suffering from the ravages of UN sanctions. The report acknowledges that about 90% of the 26-million population was dependent on the food and medicines that the programme provided.
But the investigators, in the course of their inquiries, uncovered instances of corruption and mismanagement. Saddam was allowed to skim off $10,2 -billion, and various companies as well as UN officials are alleged to have taken a share.
But the investigators said they found no evidence that Annan had used his influence to help a company, for which his son Kojo was then working, to secure one of the oil-for-food contracts.
An e-mail discovered in June from one of the company’s executives suggested that the executive had spoken to the secretary general in Paris in 1998. But the investigators dismissed the claim, saying this amounted to no more than a shouted hello across a hotel corridor, and that the executive had sub-sequently exaggerated the incident.
As for Kojo himself, the investigators criticised him on several points.
The report also described a plot in which Hussein tried to influence Annan’s predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The investigators claim that Baghdad paid millions of dollars to a South Korean businessman and Iraqi-born American businessman with the apparent expectation that they would pass money to Boutros-Ghali and another UN aide.
Although the investigators criticised Boutros-Ghali for allowing the oil-for-food programme to be established in such a way that Hussein was able to exploit it, there is no suggestion he was involved in any wrongdoing.
Annan said: “The findings in today’s report must be deeply embarrassing to us all. The inquiry committee has ripped away the curtain and shone a harsh light into the most unsightly corners of our organisation.”
He asked: “Who among us can now claim that UN management is not a problem, or is not in need of reform?”
The UN secretariat said it had already taken steps to try to prevent a repetition of the scandal. It said it has adopted “measures to strengthen accountability, ethical conduct and management performance”.
Annan is trying to push through an ambitious series of UN reforms at a summit in New York of world leaders next week but has run into opposition, mainly from Bolton, whose view of reform is markedly different from Annan’s.
Emyr Jones-Parry, British ambassador to the UN, said of the report: “We need to remember above all that it is Saddam Hussein who remains the key culprit in the oil-for- food saga.” — Â