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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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The report, by a five-member commission headed by Italian judge Antonio Cassese, is due to be published Tuesday. The study was requested by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in October to investigate whether genocide was being conducted in Darfur, where tens of thousands have been killed and 1.8 million displaced.

A U.N. source said Monday that the commission's conclusion was that the testimony it took did not amount to proof of genocide. "But it does say crimes against humanity of an ethnic nature have been committed and recommends going to the ICC [International Criminal Court]."

A diplomat described the commission's findings as "hard-hitting." Another diplomat close to the Security Council said: "The Sudanese government is not getting off."

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Fifty-eight percent of the 22,000 who took part in the poll, commissioned by the BBC World Service, said they expected Bush to have a negative impact on peace and security, compared with only 26 percent who considered him a positive force. The survey also indicated for the first time that dislike of Bush is translating into a dislike of Americans in general.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an interview with the Guardian, expressed hope that Bush's second term would prove to be more consensual than the first. He said there had been an evolution in U.S. policy, witnessed by him in successive conversations with Bush. "Evolution comes from experience," Blair said.

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The family lives in a quiet spot in the crowded Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, looking out toward the Jericho hills. Their home has been demolished twice by the Israeli army since the uprising began in 2000. One of the sons was shot dead by the army that same year as he prepared to attack a Jewish settlement, and three others are in jail, one serving life sentences and the other two awaiting sentence for attacks on Israeli targets.

Yusuf Mugrabi, 54, who was in the Fatah organization that backs presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas, said he was not voting because he was not convinced it would make any difference. "I am afraid that Abu Mazen [as Abbas is known] will give everything away."

Mohammed, a former fruit seller who was Sunday helping to clear the rubble from the remains of the family's house, said he had chosen not to follow the violent path of his brothers. He went early Sunday to the school in the camp being used as a polling station: "I voted today for Abu Mazen. Maybe he will release the prisoners."

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The conference members include Iraq's neighbors -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey -- as well as the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, the U.N., the E.U., the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The meeting was originally designed to encourage Iraq's neighbors to do more to bolster the country. But the communiqué to be published Tuesday evening is expected to offer little more than support for the general elections on Jan. 30, 2005.

All those present support elections, but Egypt, Jordan and the Arab League raised the possibility of delaying them to ensure the full participation of Sunni Arabs. "We would prefer inclusiveness by giving them more time rather than exclusiveness and on time," Hesham Youssef, a senior advisor to Arab League chief Amr Moussa, told Reuters.

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Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and President Bush has irritated Arab leaders with his campaign for a speedy introduction of democracy in their countries. France is the most pro-Arab country in Europe. In response to Blair's and Bush's espousal of the spread of Western democratic values as the best safeguard against terrorism, Chirac warned that "although our memory is sometimes short, the peoples submitted to the West's domination in the past have not forgotten and are quick to see a resurgence of imperialism and colonialism in our actions."

In the speech, Chirac reiterated his view that Europe should form a bloc as a counterbalance to the U.S. He called for the revival of multilateralism, mainly through the United Nations, rather than a world based on the "logic of power," namely the U.S. Chirac pointedly stressed the importance of dialogue between Europe and "the world's major poles" -- China, India, Brazil, Russia and various trading blocs.

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The French president is in Britain for two days to mark the end of months of events marking the 100th anniversary of the entente cordiale, the alliance agreed to after centuries of warfare. Chirac has prefaced his trip by describing relations between France and Britain as un amour violent (a stormy love affair), steeped in fierce competition and mutual esteem. "It has led us to love each other and to detest each other," he told British journalists.

After reviewing a guard of honor of British and French soldiers, he is to have talks with Blair at Downing Street, make a speech on transatlantic relations to an audience of diplomats and defense specialists, and join the queen in the evening at Windsor Castle.

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He remains a virtual prisoner of the Israelis, unwilling to take a chance by leaving his compound, where he has spent the past 41 months. The reasons are piling up: the fear of assassination, capture or exile; the possibility that Israel might attack the 20 wanted Palestinians sheltering there. But he professes to be sanguine about his predicament. "It makes no difference," he said in a three-hour discussion over dinner with British journalists this week.

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The Israeli government has blamed al-Qaida for the explosions last Thursday, rather than a Palestinian group.

Osama el-Baz, an advisor to the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said he did not necessarily disagree but had no concrete evidence. He said: "We are open-minded. The initial report was al-Qaida, but we have not found any evidence yet to substantiate this premise. We are still looking for clues." Baz said the British government had offered explosives experts and this help would be taken up if needed.

More than 20 people have been arrested in Egypt in connection with the bombings at the Red Sea resort of Taba, near the Israeli-Egyptian border, and further south at Ras Shitan. Both are popular with Israeli holiday makers.

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David Avery, chief of operations for the joint electoral management body, predicted that with more than 100,000 staff who had not seen an election before, it "will not look pretty." But he insisted that the irregularities would not be enough to deny the election legitimacy or affect the final outcome. "Not every box is going to make it? That is probably true. In the end, you count what you have got," he said at his headquarters in Kabul, heavily fortified against the threat of attack by the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The Taliban have posted "night letters" -- overnight posters -- on mosque and other walls in southern Afghanistan, threatening retribution against anyone taking part in the election.

Aid and other international organizations have reduced their staff and operations for the election campaign period; the U.S. and other NATO countries have sent in reinforcements, increased patrols and arrested suspects. Although there have been intelligence reports of hundreds of Taliban fighters moving about the country, the election campaign has so far been relatively quiet.

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"There is a lot of speculative stuff which, as far as one can tell, is based on rumor," said Paul Wilkinson, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University. "On the face of it, it does not look likely that, however fanatical and assiduous, a terrorist would be active in so many theaters."

There is no need to exaggerate his activities. The attacks he has claimed in Iraq are enough to justify the $25 million the U.S. has offered for his capture, the same as bin Laden and al-Qaida's main strategist, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

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According to one of those present, Sir Ivor had been taking part in a discussion on which candidate Europeans would back if they had a vote in the U.S. election. The ambassador said they would vote for Kerry but some people would want Bush, not least al-Qaida.

"If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual reelection of Bush, it's al-Qaida -- whereas it is clear that the Palestinians hope that a Kerry victory will unblock the situation," he said.

The Foreign Office, which warned before the war that Iraq could become a breeding ground for al-Qaida, did not deny yesterday that Sir Ivor made the remarks. "We are not making any comment other than the fact they do not represent government policy," a spokesman said.

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Hours after Russia warned Washington not to meddle in its internal affairs, Bush expressed disquiet at moves by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to fight Chechen terrorism by amassing more power for himself. "As governments fight the enemies of democracy, they must uphold the principles of democracy," the president said. "I'm  concerned about the decisions that are being made in Russia that could undermine democracy." His remarks hinted at U.S. unease that Putin could use the "war on terror" to roll back post-Soviet reform.

Putin's chief initiative in response to the carnage at Beslan, blamed on Chechen militants, has involved abolishing elections for both constituency M.P.'s and regional governors, and appointing the latter himself.

Bush warned: "Great democracies have a balance of power between central governments and local governments, a balance of power within central governments between the executive branch and the legislative branch and the judicial branch."

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He then added unequivocally: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the U.N. charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal."

Annan has until now kept a tactful silence, and his intervention at this point undermines the argument pushed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the war was legitimized by Security Council resolutions.

Annan also questioned whether it will be feasible on security grounds to go ahead with the first planned election in Iraq scheduled for January. "You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now," he said.

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The British government, in a rare departure from Washington, positioned itself alongside its European Union partners on the issue. The EU, unlike Washington, is critical of Israeli behaviour in the West Bank and Gaza.

The US administration signalled at the weekend that it was abandoning its long-term call for a freeze on all settlement activity and would back some limited expansion.

But a Downing Street spokesman said yesterday: "Our position is consistent with the statement put out by the European Union last week, and our view is that the Israelis should freeze all settlements."

The EU had expressed its dismay over new construction in the occupied territories.

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