Posted on 03/31/2005 9:36:15 PM PST by naturalman1975
Kofi Annan has done little to rid the UN of scandal and corruption. In fact he's made things worse. It's time he went
KOFI Annan this week snapped "hell, no" he would not quit as the United Nations' boss.
But hell, yes, Annan will have to go. Wait and watch.
Not only are the headlines wrong -- the Volker inquiry into the UN's oil for food scandal did not fully clear Annan over his son's shady deals -- but the UN under his leadership has got toxic.
Count just some of the recent scandals to erupt under Annan's leaden feet.
FIFTY UN peacekeepers and officials who served in the Congo face charges of sexual exploitation and rape. One, Frenchman Didier Bourguet, has been charged with running an internet pedophile ring.
JORDANIAN UN peacekeepers are accused of raping children in East Timor, according to a secret UN report obtained by The Australian, and two were sent home after injuring themselves having sex with goats.
IN 2002, a UN report found "widespread" evidence that UN soldiers sexually abused West African refugees.
CUBA, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia -- gross abusers of human rights -- were appointed in February to the five-nation working group which sets the agenda for UN Human Rights Commission meetings.
SUDAN, accused of committing genocide, was last year elected to this same commission, which was chaired by the Libya dictatorship the year before.
ANNAN last month conceded the present Human Rights Commission should be scrapped, because it now had a "credibility deficit ... which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole".
A SENIOR employee of the UN's World Meteorological Organisation was revealed to have stolen $4 million this year.
RUUD Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, was forced to quit in February after being accused of groping staff.
A REVIEW of the UN office responsible for monitoring elections this week found its Uruguayan boss had staff run personal errands for her, and rewarded favourites with unjustified travel, while other staff complained of "blatant favouritism" and a culture of fear.
THE UN is now investigating itself over claims it ran an oil for food program to feed Iraqis that was rorted of billions by dictator Saddam Hussein, with kickbacks going to UN officials and cronies of the presidents of France and Russia -- two of the five countries on the UN Security Council.
THE UN in February admitted the head of the UN's oil for food program, Benon Sevan, accused of corruption, had got Saddam to sell cheap oil to his mates, and couldn't explain his riches.
THE Volker inquiry found Sevan had in fact won secret oil deals for a company owned by a brother-in-law of the former UN boss, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
I COULD also mention the UN's infamously anti-semitic conference on racism, its refusal to enforce resolutions against Saddam, its failure to stop slaughter in Bosnia and Rwanda, its fleeing of Iraq after the bombing of its Baghdad office and more.
But you can see there was already reason to think the UN had become a cesspit under Annan -- and he was not the man to reform it.
Now this week's interim report by the Volker inquiry suggests not only that Annan is not the solution, but may be part of the problem.
It homes in on claims the UN favoured a Swiss company, Cotecna, in awarding it oil for food contracts from 1998, worth $66 million.
And why might the UN have played favourites? Because Cotecna had hired Annan's 22-year-old son Kojo as a highly-paid consultant.
Because its vice-president was a family friend so intimate that he considered Kofi Annan an "uncle". Because one of the officials in the UN's procurement office, which issues contracts, was a woman who'd looked after Kojo as a boy when his parents split up, and is so close that he calls her "aunty".
Because Cotecna's boss, the Egyptian Elie Massey, twice met Kofi Annan privately -- and contacted the corrupt Sevan, too -- before the contract was awarded.
Because Kojo billed Cotecna for time spent with his father, and often called in on him and the procurement office in the months before the contract was signed.
In the end, the inquiry -- led by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volker -- found there was "no evidence" Annan helped Cotecna get its contract, and that "based on the record" it won the business because it was the lowest bidder by $1 million.
The reason for those quote marks is this: The inquiry couldn't get all the records it needed to be sure.
In fact, it savaged Annan's former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, for having ordered all office files for the relevant period -- 1997 to 1999 -- to be shredded just a day after the Security Council approved the inquiry.
The Volker inquiry also noted that Annan had first testified he had never met Massey, Cotecna's boss.
But the inquiry's investigators then searched the hard drive of the computer of Annan's assistant and found records of two meetings between the men -- one cocktails with their wives, and the other a private chat arranged by Kojo. Only then did Annan "remember" them, too, and remember they were innocent.
A LSO odd was the inquiry Annan ordered in 1999 when a newspaper revealed that Cotecna employed his son, and had won its UN contract even though it was being investigated for paying huge bribes to Pakistan's president.
Annan's inquiry was not done by the normal legal branches, but by an official who took less than a day to report back that the Cotecna bid was clean.
But his brief report included an unsigned page, which Annan admitted he may have written himself, that falsely claimed Kojo had quit Cotecna in 1998 to avoid a conflict of interest.
In fact, the Volker inquiry found Cotecna had secretly kept paying Kojo from the signing of the contract until last year, up to $500,000 in all. It also found Cotecna had meanwhile had its contract renewed several times by the UN, with amendments that earned it more than it had first negotiated.
The UN, and Annan personally, meanwhile ignored the fact that Cotecna was under criminal investigation for bribery.
The Volker inquiry criticised Annan's response to news of that investigation and Kojo's conflict of interest as "inadequate": "Had there been a (full) investigation of these allegations, it is unlikely that Cotecna would have been awarded renewals of its contract with the United Nations."
What a toilet. But what do you expect? The UN is too far away to get the media scrutiny that keeps crookedness and sloppiness in check. It's got too many despots to be a true parliament of the people. It's got too much money to be safe from thieves. Its forums recklessly give tyrants the rights of democrats.
It is time to scale down the UN, to remember it is best as a mere talking shop, and worst as a government.
Hell, yes. Annan will go. But the worst of the UN should go with him.
I tend to agree.
And the best of the UN too!
kofi in Hebrew means 'monkey'
annan means 'cloud'
makes for some interesting plays on meaning
like "monkey fart" or something like that?!
Every time I see Kofi on TV that,s all I,m ever going to think.
Thanks!
Every time I see Kofi on TV that,s all I,m ever going to think.
Thanks!
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.