Bush declines to back beleaguered Annan

George Bush pointedly declined to support the United Nations secretary general yesterday after the head of a Senate committee investigating multibillion-dollar abuse of a UN programme in Iraq called for Kofi Annan's resignation.

President Bush called for a "full and open" accounting of the oil-for-food programme, under investigation by five congressional committees and a separate UN inquiry. According to Norm Coleman, the US senator who demanded Mr Annan's resignation on Wednesday, Saddam Hussein illegally diverted $21bn (£11bn).

Mr Coleman, the Republican head of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said Mr Annan should resign because "the most extensive fraud in the history of the UN occurred on his watch".

President Bush, asked yesterday whether Mr Annan should resign, did not reply directly. But he did say, somewhat ominously: "In order for the taxpayers of the United States to feel comfortable about supporting the United Nations, there has to be an open accounting."

Paul Volcker a former US Federal Reserve chief, who is leading the UN inquiry, has refused to hand any documents to the US investigations until his office issues its reports next month.

There is no love lost between the Bush administration and Mr Annan, who declared the US-led invasion of Iraq to be illegal. Britain, France, China and Russia, expressed support for Mr Annan yesterday, but the US pays a quarter of the UN's budget and could make life difficult for the Ghanaian secretary general - as it did for his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom it refused to back for a second term. "They are pounding the UN. They are pounding Kofi. It's worse than under Boutros, and that's saying something," said a senior UN official yesterday.

Mr Annan also faces an internal revolt from the UN staff association which represents 5,000 employees and has accused him of failing to properly investigate accusations of cronyism and sexual harassment against the UN's internal watchdog, Dileep Nair. Mr Annan has also been criticised for clearing the high commissioner for refugees, Ruud Lubbers, over allegations against him. The oil-for-food accusations, coupled with the staff association protests, have prompted other UN staff members to write an unprecedented petition expressing support for their beleaguered chief. By yesterday, 3,000 people had signed.

The oil-for-food scandal broke last January when documents surfaced alleging that, in return for political support, Saddam bribed officials from around the world with billions of dollars from the oil-for-food programme, which had allowed sanctions-hit Iraq to export limited quantities of oil to pay for food and medicine.

Press reports initially focused on allegations against the anti-war countries France and Russia, before moving more recently to turn the spotlight on American firms and individuals. The head of the UN programme, Benon Sevan, has also been accused of accepting bribes, which he denies. The amount of money allegedly involved has also swelled, fuelling anti-UN feeling in the US, where it is now suggested that the funds may have been used to fund the insurgency against US troops in Iraq.

In March, the US General Accounting Office estimated that Saddam raised $4.4bn from illicit surcharges and kickbacks through the oil- for-food scheme, which ran from 1996 until it was wound up after the Iraq war last year. The figure mentioned by Mr Coleman in the Wall Street Journal was $21.3bn.

But UN officials stressed yesterday that Mr Coleman's figures included all the illegal revenue gained by Saddam, not just the oil-for-food programme. Under the sanctions regime, all the contracts with Iraq were monitored by the UN Security Council - including the US, which notably turned a blind eye to billions of dollars worth of oil smuggled through Turkey.

Mr Annan's reputation has also suffered from the fact that his son, Kojo, worked for a company that was given contracts with the oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

Kojo Annan maintains that all reported payments to him were legally proper and only relate to Africa.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Its-payback-time-for-Kofi-Annan/2004/12/03/1101923333516.html?oneclick=true

It's payback time for Kofi Annan
By Caroline Overington
New York Correspondent
December 4, 2004

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UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
Photo: AP
The UN Secretary-General is feeling the weight of the Bush Administration's anger over his role in the US election.

The whisper in Washington is that there were two losers on November 2.

The first was John Kerry, who lost the election to President Bush.

The second was Kofi Annan. Mr Annan wanted Senator Kerry to win, in part because he loves his job as UN Secretary-General and hoped for an unprecedented third term, something Mr Bush was not likely to back.

He did all he could to help Senator Kerry, even telling the BBC in the week before the election that, in his opinion, the war in Iraq was illegal.

The comment was designed to hurt Mr Bush, but it failed. Now it's payback time.

It is no secret that many in the Bush Administration are trying to blast Mr Annan from office, not only because they think he sided with the Democrats, but because he has refused to send UN staff to Iraq, saying it's still not safe.

They have hammered him mercilessly over the oil-for-food program, a scandal that continues to grow.

Earlier this week some Republicans called for Mr Annan's resignation. He is unlikely to pay any attention but, on the off-chance that it happens, the US won't be able to take the credit, since Mr Annan is doing a tremendous job of sinking himself.

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AdvertisementAfter all, if everything that is being said about the UN is true, his six-year run as Secretary-General has been a spectacular failure.

According to investigators, Saddam Hussein ripped $US20 billion ($A26 billion) from the UN's oil-for-food program under Mr Annan's watch and used the money to strengthen his control of Iraq, just as sanctions were supposed to weaken his regime.

It is further alleged that some UN staff - including the head of the oil-for-food program - were taking bribes from Saddam.

In other matters, it is alleged that a senior UN staffer regularly sexually harasses his staff and that Mr Annan dismissed complaints about it and that UN peacekeepers in the Congo have been demanding bribes in exchange for food, and raping and beating local women (and taking photographs of it).

'(He's) open, he listens, he doesn't roll over, and he always tries to do what's right.'
- Colin PowellIf that were not enough, Mr Annan's own son is accused of making money from the oil-for-food program, by taking payments from a Swiss company that had a UN contract.

This is hardly the legacy the Secretary-General wanted to leave. But then, history was unlikely to judge him kindly.

Mr Annan has worked for the UN for four decades, rising from an entry-level budget officer to Secretary-General, the highest office.

Throughout the 1990s he was head of the UN's peacekeeping office. The UN's peacekeeping efforts during that time were disastrous. Its most shocking failures were in Bosnia, where 20,000 men and boys were slaughtered after being abandoned by peacekeepers in so-called UN "safe" areas, and in Rwanda, where more than 800,000 people were hacked to death with no intervention.

Mr Annan knew that a massacre in Rwanda was imminent. The head of the UN's peacekeeping mission, Major-General Romeo Dallaire, sent him an urgent memo, practically begging him to intervene before the killings began.

Mr Annan does not deny that he should have done something - anything - to try to prevent the killings.

"All of us must bitterly regret that we did not do more to prevent it," he said, in 2001. "On behalf of the United Nations, I acknowledge this failure and express my deep remorse."

Given these facts, many were surprised when Mr Annan and the UN received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. Then again, it was not for making peace, but for "revitalising" the UN.

Mr Annan was, by then, the organisation's seventh secretary-general.

The US backed him into the role in 1997, saying he was someone they could work with. He had some early successes: he persuaded the US to pay the $1 billion in dues it had been withholding.

Just one year later, however, he made a goose of himself in Iraq. In those days, Saddam was refusing to let weapons inspectors in but Mr Annan believed he could persuade the dictator to do the right thing.

He borrowed a private jet from French President Jacques Chirac and flew to Baghdad to negotiate with the tyrant. They smoked cigars together and Mr Annan told Saddam he was a leader of "courage".

Saddam told Mr Annan he would let the weapons inspectors return, and Mr Annan was hailed as a hero. He got a state dinner in Paris. Mr Chirac thanked Mr Annan for preventing a third world war.

But Mr Annan had been duped. Saddam had no intention of letting weapons inspectors return. Within six months, president Bill Clinton was bombing the country again.

Mr Annan's legacy is not entirely negative. In 1990 - before he was Secretary-General - he helped secure the release of 900 Westerners and UN staff being held hostage in Iraq. The peacekeeping effort in East Timor is regarded as a success.

He is also very popular in some quarters, which is not a bad thing for a diplomat to be. He is sometimes call the "rock star" diplomat because he hangs out with people like Bono; he eats in New York's best restaurants and lives with his second wife in a mansion formerly owned by the banker, J.P. Morgan's family.

He also has powerful friends. Colin Powell once described him as "open, he listens, he doesn't roll over, and he always tries to do what's right". The former US ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, has described him as the "best secretary-general in the history of the UN".

Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright says he is "very gentle, somebody who speaks with a very low voice. But he also shows a great deal of determination".

But he has enemies, too. On October 31, Mr Annan wrote to the US and Britain, urging them not to launch an assault on insurgents.

Iraq's interim Defence Minister, Hazem Sa'alan, scoffed. "Where was Kofi Annan when Saddam was slaughtering the Iraqis like sheep?"

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