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Annan lashes at critics on Iraq oil, food scandal
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-29 09:29 U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday
called "outrageous and exaggerated" accusations that U.N. staff allowed
corruption by Saddam Hussein's regime, and rejected conflict-of-interest charges
involving his own son.
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| UN Secretary General Kofi Annan makes a
point during a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York, April 28,
2004. Annan warned the U.S. led administration in Iraq that the use of
military force in civilian areas would make it harder to successfully end
the occupation. [Reuters] | In his strongest comments to date on the burgeoning U.N.-run oil-for-food
scandal, Annan said U.N. officials were blamed for Saddam's smuggling of oil and
a variety of other misdeeds that they had no way of controlling.
"We had no mandate to stop oil smuggling," Annan told a news conference.
"They were driving the trucks through northern Iraq to Turkey. The U.S. and
the British had planes in the air. We were not there."
He called some of the comments he read "constructive and thoughtful." But he
said: "Others have been outrageous and exaggerated. In fact, when you look at
it, if you read their reports, it looks as if the Saddam regime had nothing to
do with it. They did nothing wrong. It was all the U.N."
"Why is all this being dumped on the U.N.?," Annan asked, recalling the
supervisory role of the Security Council.
"Of course the member states are not coming out saying we had a role or we
had an oversight responsibility. "So all was dumped on the secretariat," he
said.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says Iraq
was estimated to have smuggled $5.7 billion in oil outside the U.N. program. It
said Iraqi elites pocketed another $4.4 billion by illegal surcharges on oil.
The U.N.-run oil-for-food program, which began in late 1996 and closed last
year, allowed Iraq to sell oil and buy civilian goods to ease the impact of 1991
Gulf War U.N. sanctions on ordinary Iraqis.
Annan said that if corruption against any U.N. official proved true, he would
not hesitate to lift diplomatic immunity. He has appointed a three-member panel,
led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, to probe the
allegations.
Among media charges was a conflict of interest because Annan's son worked for
the Geneva-based firm Cotecna. The company in December 1998, was awarded
contract to monitor Iraqi imports under the oil-for food program after a British
firm withdrew its agents because of U.S. bombing.
Kojo Annan joined the company as a trainee in Geneva in December 1995 and
then worked in Nigeria and Ghana. He submitted his resignation on December 15,
1997, which went into effect on February 28, 1998.
Annan said his son had joined Cotecna "before I became secretary-general, as
a 22-year old trainee" and went to work in West Africa.
"Neither he nor I had anything to do with the contract with Cotecna," Annan
said. "That was done in strict accordance with U.N, rules and financial
regulations."
Most of the misdeeds in the scandal were reported over the years to a
Security Council committee that supervised the program, particularly the
smuggling of oil, surcharges from oil dealers and shoddy goods Baghdad had
ordered. But political divisions often prevented action.
New since the fall of the Saddam are lists of bribes to government officials,
firms and groups around the world of oil vouchers they could sell. On the list
is Benon Sevan, the head of the oil-for-food program, who has vigorously denied
it.
On Wednesday, John Ruggie, a Columbia University professor and former U.N.
adviser, questioned whether some of the charges had an anti-U.N. agenda in
testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations
Committee.
He said the U.N. Security Council had oversight of the program and approved
some 36,000 contracts.
"Yet, as best as I can determine, of those 36,000 contracts not one -- not a
single solitary one-- was ever held up by any member on the grounds of pricing,"
he said.
Because support for the sanctions was rapidly eroding, Ruggie said "it seems
reasonable to infer that the U.S. and Britain held their noses and overlooked
pricing irregularities in order to keep the sanctions regime in
place."
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