ANNAN
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters):
A YEAR-LONG probe into the Iraqi oil-for-food programme heaped sharp criticism on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his deputy and the U.N. Security Council yesterday for allowing Saddam Hussein to illegally obtain more than $10 billion.
The programme, which allowed Hussein to sell oil to buy food and choose his own customers, "was a compact with the devil and the devil had means for manipulating the programme to his ends," said Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, who headed the probe.
Volcker delivered his nearly 1,000-page five-volume report to the 15-nation Security Council and told them to institute sweeping management reforms.
NO ONE WAS IN CHARGE
The report said a major problem was that no one was in charge of the $64 billion programme - neither the Security Council, meant to supervise it, nor the U.N. secretariat headed by Annan. But Annan is not accused of personal gain or influencing contract bidding, which involved a firm that employed his son, Kojo.
Annan told the council "the report is critical of me personally, and I accept its criticism," adding that the findings are "deeply embarrassing to us all." He, like Volcker, said member states had to approve some of the sweeping financial controls the United Nations has proposed.
The report said the former Iraqi president was able to divert $10 billion under oil-for-food, which began in late 1996 and ended in 2003. Of this, $1.8 billion was from revenues related to the programme,
the Independent Inquiry Committee said.
Another $8.4 billion came from smuggling oil to Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Turkey, with the knowledge of U.N. Security Council members, who were to enforce sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
"The committee's central conclusion is that the United Nations requires stronger executive leadership, thoroughgoing administrative reform and more reliable controls and auditing," the panel said in a statement.
"However, responsibility for what went wrong with the programme cannot be laid exclusively at the door of the (U.N.) secretariat," the panel said. "Members of the Security Council ... must shoulder their share of the blame in providing uneven and wavering direction in the implementation of the programme."
