United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is fighting for his job in the face of an increasing campaign by Republican congressmen, who have launched a series of investigations into the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.
Annan faces three separate congressional investigations into the oil-for-food program, and a U.N. Security Council source said a further four are pending.
George W. Bush’s Republican Party is hostile toward the U.N. in general but Annan in particular, especially after he last year declared that the war in Iraq was illegal.
Sen. Norm Coleman, the Republican senator whose committee Thursday published a report naming George Galloway, the British M.P. for the antiwar Respect Party, and Charles Pasqua, the former French minister, in connection with the oil-for-food scandal, has called on Annan to resign. Coleman also hinted that the United States could withhold its funding, which he said amounted to about 22 percent of the U.N.’s total budget.
Annan, who was badly undermined by revelations that his son Kojo was paid by a company that secured a lucrative U.N. contract for Iraq, is refusing to resign. He is due to retire in December 2006. If Annan does not resign before then, the United States will try to ensure that the next appointee, who is due to be chosen from Asia, will be in the American camp.
Coleman’s inquiry is being conducted by the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations. Separate inquiries are being carried out by the House Committee on International Relations, led by the Republican Henry Hyde, and the House subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations, headed by Christopher Shays, another Republican.
These come on top of an internal U.N. inquiry ordered last year by Annan and headed by Paul Volcker, who has already issued two interim reports and is due to publish his final report in the summer. A spokeswoman for Volcker said Thursday the timetable could slip and that a decision on a publication date was “not yet on the horizon.” The two interim reports by Volcker have been extremely damaging to Annan, criticizing his officials as well as Kojo.
The inquiry is into the program in which Saddam Hussein was allowed to sell limited quantities of oil in return for food between 1996 and 2003. Various companies and individuals are alleged to have benefited from illegal payments.
As long as only Volcker was involved, Annan could contain the row, and U.N. officials hoped publication of Volcker’s report would mark an end to the affair. But with Republican congressmen piling in, Annan faces month after month of rows and allegations.
U.N. officials admitted Thursday that a clash between the world organization and the U.S. Congress has put in jeopardy a program of reforms on which Annan has staked his reputation. Heads of government are due in New York in September to ratify the reform package, including expansion of the Security Council, which would amount to the biggest overhaul of the U.N. since its founding in 1945.
But relations between the U.N. and Congress have deteriorated sharply in the last week over the oil-for-food program, to the extent that a U.S. federal judge has been called upon to intervene.
One U.N. official admitted that Annan, who wanted the reforms to be his legacy, is being “distracted” by issue. The official said it is now possible that Annan will not achieve in September anything other than minimal changes, and that the grandiose plan for increasing the Security Council from 15 members to 25 will be shelved.
A U.N. official close to Annan acknowledged that the publication of Volker’s report will not end the controversy. “Yes, that is true. It isn’t over with Volcker,” the official said. He added that Annan had said the disclosures about the oil-for-food program had been embarrassing but that he was determined to press ahead. Asked at a recent press conference if he was considering resigning, Annan said: “Hell, no.”
The U.N. official said that if relations between the United States and the U.N. continue to deteriorate at the present speed, he fears Congress will once again impose a freeze on U.S. funding of the organization, as it did 15 years ago. The official said: “We are doing all we can to give them the information they need. We hope it will have a sensible ending. There were mistakes [in the oil-for-food program] but not gross corruption — just minor.”
The number of suicide attacks in Iraq has reached a record high, with more than 67 insurgents blowing themselves up in April alone. Figures from diplomatic and Iraqi security sources Wednesday show that of the 135 car bombings last month, which took hundreds of lives and inflicted thousands of injuries, more than half were suicide missions. The number of car bombings has doubled since March.
The level of suicide attacks has raised fears that American and Iraqi forces are losing the battle to prevent foreign fighters, prepared to die for the cause of defeating the U.S. occupation, from entering the country. Most suicide bombers are thought to come from outside Iraq, intelligence sources say, but they operate with local support. A Western diplomat said that for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, suicide bombers account for most of the daily car bomb attacks. “There is an apparent free flow of suicide bombers into Iraq,” he said. A senior Iraqi official added: “Unless we can stop that flood, people will be afraid to gather in public together.”
The warnings followed another series of blasts across the country Wednesday that killed at least 71 people and wounded more than 100.
Since the new government led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was announced on April 28, nearly 400 people have been killed and up to 1,000 wounded in rebel attacks. The bombers have targeted civilians as well as Iraq’s nascent security structures and the U.S.-led forces. The security official said that as well as car bombs there had also been a rise in the number of “walk-in” suicide attacks. He said the U.S. military and Iraqi authorities were increasingly alarmed at the cooperation between foreign militants in Iraq and “the domestic insurgents.” This could turn “the homegrown resistance into a breeding ground for a major jihadi movement.”
A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said the insurgency was averaging 70 attacks a day this month, up from 30 to 40 in February and March.
Wednesday the bloodshed continued, with five suicide bombings — one each in the central Iraqi towns of Hawija and Tikrit, and three in Baghdad. The heaviest casualties occurred in Hawija at a police and army recruitment center. Witnesses said a man with explosives strapped to his body slipped through a security cordon and blew himself up in a line of 150 people. Iraqi police said at least 30 people had been killed and 35 injured.
In Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, at least 33 people were killed and 80 wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded in a market near a police station. Police said the station had been targeted, but the bomber swerved into a crowd because he was unable to breach the security barriers. “What I saw was a tragedy,” said Ibrahim Mohammed, a migrant worker. “Some people had their heads torn off by the explosion, some were burned, some were ripped to pieces.” The group Ansar al-Sunn later claimed responsibility.
Three car bombs targeting a police station and patrols exploded in Baghdad, killing at least four people and wounding 14, police said.
Iraq’s new interior minister, Bayan Baqir Jabr, claimed the government had a grip on the security situation, saying committees of police and military officials had been formed to implement a plan to protect Iraqi cities. He gave no details.
U.S. forces continued with a large-scale offensive in the western desert near the Syrian border, aiming to disrupt militant supply lines into Iraq. Operation Matador was launched after intelligence suggested followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had fled there from the restive towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, also former targets of U.S. attacks.
The escalation in violence has not prompted a rethinking in London or Washington over an early withdrawal of troops. Downing Street acknowledges the violence has become heavier recently, blaming a three-month political vacuum as Iraqi politicians argued over the formation of a transitional government, completed this week, and an improvement in the efficiency of the rebels. Officials are adamant British troops will not be withdrawn until Iraqi security forces can begin to take over.
The U.S., Britain and other coalition forces are mandated by the U.N. to remain in Iraq only until the completion of the political process in December, when elections are set to take place, but they admit the lack of readiness among Iraqi forces means they may stay longer.
Kim Howells, the new Foreign Office minister responsible for the Middle East, Wednesday described the attacks as “horrendous.” He said: “These and other recent tragic incidents are the desperate acts of those seeking to destabilize the successful democratic political process … They will not win.”
In the United States, meanwhile, the Senate voted unanimously for $76 billion to fund this year’s military operations in Iraq. The vote also increased payments to families of soldiers killed in combat from $12,000 to $100,000.
The position of the U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, was undermined Tuesday after an independent inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal heavily criticized his son Kojo and a Swiss company. Although Annan was personally cleared of improper influence in the awarding of a contract to the company, Cotecna, the committee of inquiry’s findings about his son left question marks about his stewardship of the U.N., which has come under increasing pressure.
At a press conference Tuesday, the chairman of the inquiry committee, Paul Volcker, said an investigation the secretary-general had initiated was “inadequate” and should have been referred to the U.N.’s independent watchdog agency.
Annan was defiant. “As I had always hoped and firmly believed, the inquiry has cleared me of any wrongdoing,” he said. Asked if he would resign, he replied: “Hell, no.” But Annan, who is due to retire next year at the end of two terms, could now find it difficult to push through his reform program, and to pacify his critics.
Republican Sen. Norm Coleman said Tuesday: “His lack of leadership, combined with conflicts of interest and a lack of responsibility and accountability, point to one, and only one, outcome: his resignation.”
In Washington, the White House voiced cautious support for Annan. Spokesman Scott McClellan said: “This is a very serious matter. We have stated that repeatedly. Congress has been looking into it as well. We continue to support the United Nations; we continue to support Secretary-General Annan in his work at the United Nations. We will carefully study the report that Volcker has put forward today. We’re also looking forward to seeing the final results of his investigation.”
The inquiry is continuing and is due to issue its final report in the summer. It will give its verdict on the wider issue of the conduct of the oil-for-food-program, which was set up to minimize the impact of sanctions on Iraq by allowing Saddam Hussein to sell oil in return for food, a system open to abuse. An interim report of the inquiry released last month was critical of the U.N.’s handling of the program.
Tuesday’s report dealt with the specific issue of whether the award of a contract by the U.N. to Cotecna, which employed Kojo Annan, was free of improper or illicit influence. Cotecna was selected by the U.N. in December 1998 to conduct inspections of humanitarian goods entering Iraq.
The report concluded: “There is no evidence that the selection of Cotecna in 1998 was subject to affirmative or improper influence of the secretary general in the bidding or selection process.” But the report notes that U.N. rules were not followed: Cotecna was not asked to submit a financial statement, one that might have helped reveal the company’s financial strains at the time.
Volcker said: “Our investigation has disclosed several instances in which [Annan] might, or could, have become aware of Cotecna’s participation in the bidding process. However, there is neither convincing testimony to that effect nor any documentary evidence.”
Volcker added: “Taking all of this into account, the committee has not found the evidence is reasonably sufficient to show that the secretary general knew that Cotecna had participated in the bidding process in 1998.”
But the report is critical of Kojo Annan. He left Cotecna in 1998, but, apparently unknown to the U.N. or his father, continued to be paid by the company until 2004. The report said that after the media disclosed his relationship with the company in January 1999, Kojo Annan “actively participated in efforts by Cotecna to conceal the true nature of its continuing relationship with him. Kojo Annan also intentionally deceived the secretary general about this continuing financial relationship.” Nor had he been totally forthcoming to the inquiry about the payments.
The report adds: “Significant questions remain about the actions of Kojo Annan during the fall of 1998 as well as about the integrity of Kojo Annan’s business and financial dealings with respect to the program.” The inquiry is still looking into this.
The report concluded that Cotecna had cooperated in making documents and staff available, but that it had “made false statements to the public, the United Nations and the committee.”
Annan’s former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, is also criticized for allegedly giving the go-ahead for the shredding of documents relevant to the inquiry. The report says an assistant to Riza, who retired in December, had shredded many documents in 2004. The shredding continued even after Annan issued an order that all oil-for-food documents be preserved, Volcker said. Riza “acted imprudently” and in violation of the document preservation order, the committee concluded.
More than 180,000 people have died from hunger and disease during the last 18 months of the Darfur conflict, the United Nations said Tuesday, as negotiations continued at its New York headquarters to break the deadlock on a new Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government.
Brian Grogan, a spokesman for Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said an average 10,000 Sudanese civilians were dying each month, much higher than earlier estimates. They were victims mainly of starvation or of disease in refugee camps after being driven from their villages by Sudanese soldiers and government-backed Janjaweed militiamen. The estimates exclude those killed in the fighting.
Khartoum accused the U.N. of producing the figures as a ploy to get the Security Council to take action against Sudan, and demanded evidence to back up the numbers. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said: “Jan Egeland was here — I met him [and] he never mentioned this number.” Egeland said last week that an estimate of 70,000 was too low, but did not indicate what he regarded as a more realistic figure.
Nearly a year after the U.N. described Darfur as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, there is no sign the scorched-earth campaign against black African villages is over. Hundreds of new refugees are flooding into overcrowded camps, such as the giant settlement at Kalma in south Darfur, which housed fewer than 10,000 people this time last year but now houses 100,000.
Sally Austin, assistant country director for the aid agency Care, said: “When I was there last, three weeks ago, we were seeing between 200 and 250 people arriving per day in two sectors [of the camp] where we work. The new refugees are queueing just to be able to get plastic sheeting to build temporary shelters. They are having to queue to get on food distribution lists — not just queueing for food. We are also seeing people building more permanent structures out of mud, which I think is a sign that people realize they are going to be there another nine months.”
Nearly 2 million black Africans have been driven from their homes in Darfur since the war began, and a further 200,000 have crossed into Chad. Two years of war have transformed Darfur into a landscape of refugee camps — swaths of ghostly, deserted villages and roving armed bands.
The United States, which describes the war as genocide, is pushing for measures that will target individuals accused of major crimes, mainly in the Sudanese military, government and Janjaweed but also in rebel groups.
The U.N. Security Council failed to reach agreement on a new resolution last week. The U.S. blamed Russia and China for blocking a proposal to introduce limited sanctions. Others on the Security Council blamed the U.S. because of its objection to referring the perpetrators to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The U.S., which opposes the ICC, has suggested that the perpetrators face a special tribunal in Africa.
The British government remains hopeful that a compromise can be reached by the end of the week. Rick Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the U.N., this week described as preposterous a report in the Guardian last week that the United States might allow reference to the ICC to go through.
A British source said Tuesday such a compromise remained a possibility, though hopes were beginning to diminish. The U.S. would need a cast-iron guarantee that its immunity from the ICC would not be affected, the source said.
China, which imports oil from Sudan and has up to 5,000 expatriates working there, opposes an oil embargo but is almost ready for a travel ban and an assets freeze on the main perpetrators.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas challenged Israel Tuesday to move to “serious” negotiations as a matter of urgency and warned that without political progress there could be a return to violence. Addressing Tony Blair’s international meeting in London, Abbas promised “to exert 100 percent effort in the domain of security” to try to prevent attacks such as Feb. 25′s suicide bomb in Tel Aviv in which five people died, but warned that “security is vulnerable to regression and even collapse if it is not protected by a serious political process between us and the Israelis.”
Although Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last month, the Israeli government is resisting wider talks. Abbas wants direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the issues that need to be resolved in order to secure a final peace deal, including borders, refugees, Jerusalem and Israeli settlers.
The one-day conference in London, which was confined to discussion about reform of the Palestinian Authority and excluded these wider issues, could turn out to be a staging post on the way to direct negotiations. The Israelis were not present Tuesday. Abbas said the Palestinian Authority would try to find the perpetrators of last Friday’s attack but, in a comment that will infuriate Israelis, noted that Israel was responsible for security in the part of the West Bank the suicide bomber originated from.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, responding to the conference, said: “I am very sorry the Palestinian leadership is still hesitating over its need to fight terror. It has to be clear that as long as they don’t take the strategic decision to dismantle terrorist infrastructure, we cannot truly advance towards peace.”
But Abbas said he expected the London meeting “will support and lead to the convening of the international conference called for in the road map, to discuss, based on international legitimacy, the resolution of all permanent status issues including: refugees, Jerusalem, borders, water and settlements, as well as all other issues pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
The road map is a peace agreement drafted two years ago by the “quartet” of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. Under it, after a series of measures have been implemented, including Palestinian reforms, a conference would be held to launch negotiations on a final peace deal. A further meeting would then complete the deal.
The quartet met Tuesday on the sidelines of the London conference. The group called for “immediate action by the Palestinian Authority to apprehend and bring to justice the perpetrators” of the Tel Aviv suicide bombing. But it also had a warning for the Israelis. It said a Palestinian state was viable only if it had contiguous territory and was not broken up into cantonments by the presence of large Israeli settlements. “A state of scattered territories will not work,” the group said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who held a separate meeting with Abbas, echoed this. “Israel must also take no action that prejudices a final settlement and must help ensure that a new Palestinian state is truly viable. A state of scattered territories will not work,” she said.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the conference that the two-state solution remained the basis for a lasting and just peace. “Therefore, we view with concern the ongoing settlement policy in the West Bank,” he said. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said there had been many positive developments recently. “This is a moment of promise and potential. The sense of expectation is palpable,” he said.
The participants issued a 15-page communiqué, the most important part of which was the creation of a U.S.-led international team, including Britain, to help the Palestinians reform their security services. The team is to be led by Lt. Gen. William Ward, the U.S. security coordinator for the region. This sign of greater U.S. involvement contrasted with George W. Bush’s first-term resistance to calls for Washington to broker a peace agreement.
The European Union pledged $330 million over the next year to help the Palestinians rebuild their economy, and the United States promised $350 million. The U.K. raised its contribution from 20 million to 30 million pounds.
The United Nations suffered grave damage to its international reputation Thursday after it emerged that the official who headed the oil-for-food program for Iraq sought and obtained bribes from Saddam Hussein’s regime. In a highly critical report, Benon Sevan was rebuked for actions that were “ethically improper and seriously undermined the integrity of the U.N.”
“This is a painful episode for everyone in the U.N.,” said the head of the investigation, former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. He went on to accuse Sevan of offering to use his influence at the U.N. in return for the granting of vouchers to purchase Iraqi oil at favorable prices on behalf of a small Panamanian-registered firm. “Mr. Sevan created a grave and continuing conflict of interest,” he said.
Sevan, a Cypriot who has spent 40 years as a career diplomat at the U.N., has denied wrongdoing. However, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan issued a statement later Thursday saying the U.N. would take disciplinary action against Sevan and Joseph Stephanides, the former chief of the U.N. sanctions branch, who was also criticized in the report. “Should any findings of the inquiry give rise to criminal charges, the U.N. will cooperate with national law enforcement authorities pursuing those charges, and in the interests of justice I will waive the diplomatic immunity of the staff member concerned,” Annan said.
The oil-for-food scam allegedly saw Saddam exploit loopholes in the system, offering lucrative oil allocations or vouchers that could be sold on for profit in an attempt to bribe leaders around the world. According to the investigative report, between 1998 and 2001 Sevan sought vouchers for several million barrels of Iraqi oil on behalf of a small company called African Middle East Petroleum. In return, he was expected to make a case for Iraq receiving cash to upgrade its crumbling oil facilities, which he and several U.N. Security Council members did. The Panamanian-registered firm was believed to have made a $1.5 million profit on the vouchers.
“The most distinct finding is the accumulation of evidence that [Sevan] did in fact solicit oil allocations for a small trading company,” Volcker said. “The Iraqis … certainly thought they were buying influence.” In addition, Volcker cited financial records which show that Sevan received $160,000 in cash payments from 1999 to 2003.
Although the allegations against Sevan were the focal point of the report, Volcker said the inquiry did not find systematic misuse of funds. However, it also found that three U.N. contractors for the program were selected without going through a competitive bidding process.
The White House and Republican congressmen are exploiting the oil-for-food row to undermine Annan, who opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Earlier Thursday, a U.N. official described Sevan as “a good man being made a scapegoat.”
Volcker is planning to produce another interim report before the summer looking into Cotecna, a company that benefited from the oil-for-food program and employed Annan’s son, Kojo. He said work on that was well along. The final report is due in June.
Annan stressed Thursday that the U.N. is already taking action to improve the organization’s procedures. At the height of the oil-for-food program, set up in 1996 to alleviate the impact of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, the roads to Jordan and other neighbors of Iraq were full of tankers carrying illicit oil. Although Annan’s secretariat ran the program, ultimate responsibility rested with the Security Council, which included the United States.
