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| Sunday, 3 April 2005 |
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The oil-for-food scandal : Torturing the United Nations At some point in his career as chairman of America's Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker appears to have learnt the art of Chinese water torture. Almost a full year since being asked by the Security Council to investigate the UN's mismanagement of Iraq's oil-for-food programme, Volcker has yet to deliver his final report.
That is now expected in the middle of the year. But he has this week issued the second of two interim ones, on the strength of which many people, including members of the American Congress, are renewing calls for Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary-general, to resign. Should he? Lucrative Here's the torture. Neither of Volcker's reports to date makes a clear case against Annan himself. The first, in February, found that Benon Sevan, who headed the UN programme, had an "irreconcilable conflict of interest" because he helped a friend's firm acquire a lucrative oil contract from Iraq. Sevan pleads innocence but has left the UN. This week's report focuses on Cotecna, a company that in 1998 won a "humanitarian inspection" contract-and happened to employ Annan's son, Kojo Annan. Volcker's team, seeking to find out whether this, too, amounted to a conflict of interest, has found no evidence that Kofi used any influence in awarding the contract to Kojo's firm. The senior Annan therefore claims to have been "exonerated". For two reasons, sadly, that is not the case. First, the Cotecna affair is only one sub-plot in the larger drama of the oil-for-food scandal. The indictment his critics lay against Annan is that the UN's boss should take ultimate responsibility for his organisation having mismanaged the programme, allowing Saddam Hussein to use bribes and kickbacks to siphon off billions of dollars that had been intended for humanitarian relief. Volcker's interim report says nothing about responsibility for this wider management failure so can hardly be construed as an exoneration. Second, even in the Cotecna affair, Volcker does not award Annan a gold star. The report finds no evidence of corrupt behaviour by the senior Annan, but it paints a disturbing picture. Kojo appears to have lied to Kofi about his relationship with Cotecna. Kofi "forgot" various meetings he had with Cotecna's boss. When Kofi did become aware that his son's employer had made a bid for a UN contract, he asked his chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, to make sure there was no conflict of interest. But Volcker finds this investigation "inadequate". Riza then had many of his own files shredded-even after orders had gone out to preserve and secure all papers that might be relevant to the oil-for-food investigation. Scandal In short, both the wider scandal and its Cotecna sub-plot suggest that Annan has been a weak manager-even if, which remains to be proven, his ethics are as pure as snow. Moreover, oil-for-food is only one of several failures to have taken place on his watch. Another is the pattern of widespread sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in several countries. A week ago, Annan argued that the UN needed reform from top to bottom. Some of his ideas are good ones. But should he not make way for a new secretary-general, untainted by failure and controversy, to drive the changes through? If the UN were a company and Annan its boss, he would be asked resign right away. But the UN is not a company. Ultimate power rests with the member states, not a chief executive with a licence to issue whatever orders he likes. In the case of the principal exhibit against Annan-oil-for-food-there is an especially strong argument for reserving final judgment until Volcker issues his final report. That is because this programme was set up and run closely by the Security Council itself. Volcker has yet to pronounce on how much blame lies with Annan and how much with his political masters. As pressure on him mounts, Annan may decide that his reputation is already so battered that he owes it to the UN to go. But hounding him out before all the evidence is in will add to the conviction of his defenders that he is being persecuted mainly for having criticised the American-led war in Iraq. Better to wait the few months until the Volcker report is complete. Then at last the water-torture can end. Courtesy: The Economist |
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