UN chief hits at oil-for-food claims
By Mark Turner at the United Nations
Published: April 29 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: April 29 2004 5:00

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, took the offensive yesterday against continuing allegations of corruption in Iraq's oil-for-food programme, saying the UN was being blamed for areas over which it had no control and that national governments shared responsibility for any lack of oversight.

"Some of the comments that I have read have been rather outrageous and exaggerated," he said.

"When you read the reports, it looks as if the Saddam regime had nothing to do with it: [that] it was all the UN." But Mr Annan said there was "no way" the UN could have stopped illegal oil smuggling, which accounted for $5.7bn (€4.8bn, �3.2bn) of an estimated $10.1bn in illegal revenues acquired by the Iraq regime.

National governments, through a committee of UN Security Council officials, had had a significant role in approving contracts, through which Iraq diverted an estimated $4.1bn in illegal surcharges and kickbacks.

"We had no mandate to stop oil smuggling," Mr Annan said. "There was a maritime taskforce that was supposed to do that. They were driving the trucks through northern Iraq to Turkey. The US and the British had planes in the air. We were not there. Why is all this being dumped on the UN?"

As for the approval of contracts, "of course the member states are not coming out, saying we had a role, or we had an oversight responsibility, so all is dumped on the secretariat", he said. "Be that as it may, these allegations are doing damage and we need to face it sternly."

Some of the accusations have hit close to home, focusing on the relationship between Kojo, Mr Annan's son, and Cotecna, the company that monitored imports. Yesterday Mr Annan explicitly denied any familial wrongdoing.

"There is nothing in the accusations about my son. He joined the company, even before I became secretary-general, as a 22-year-old, as a trainee in Geneva. He was assigned to work for them in west Africa, mainly in Nigeria and Ghana," he said.

"Neither he nor I had anything to with the [Iraq] contract for Cotecna. That was done in strict accordance with UN rules."

But UN officials remain concerned at the possibility that some staff were on the take. "If at the end any UN staff members are found guilty of wrongdoing we will deal with them," Mr Annan said.

"In some situations we may even want to lift immunity, so that we do not impede the judicial process."
Note: Yes, indeed. And the US Government should also lift immunity from prosecution against those who made the charges in the first place. Make the claimants prove their claims have some merit, and are not willful figments of Karl Rowe's imagination.There should be some punishment for willful lying about dishonesty and theft by Governmental agents and bureaus by other Governmental agents and agencies, especially if the lying supports the Junta's politically motivated fabrications.
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