Oil-for-graft at the UN
NY Daily News Editorial
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Kofi Annan has some explaining to do, and he knows it. Now that it's no longer possible to maintain with half a straight face that the United Nations' humanitarian oil-for-food program in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was not mercilessly looted, Secretary General Annan concedes that "it is highly possible there has been quite a lot of wrongdoing."
Yep, sure looks like it. There's one of the troubles with a free and independent Baghdad for you. So much embarrassing stuff starts spilling out of the place with Saddam gone.
Oil-for-food was the operation by which the UN proposed to feed Iraqis desperately suffering under the sanctions imposed after the Gulf War. Saddam was permitted to sell limited quantities of his oil in return for relief for his people. Instead, of course, he appropriated the UN dollars for himself - and, per mounting evidence, enriched assorted business cronies and even, what a surprise, souls inside the UN bureaucracy.
Till now, Annan had favored an in-house probe of charges that UN people had their snouts in Saddam's trough. So hilarious is the idea of such a self-inquiry, though, that even Annan understands a broader investigation is necessary, and he has called for one. As it happens, though, such an investigation would require approval by the Security Council.
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And there is good reason to suspect that neither France
nor Russia is going to be all that happy to see too many
honest answers coming out in the wash.
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For the moment, this largely leaves the Iraqi Governing Council and the U.S. General Accounting Office doing the digging. What is known at this time, GAO has informed a House subcommittee, is that Saddam personally pocketed more than $10 billion. Unestablished is precisely where millions more went. Unquestioned is that very little of this relief ever ended up in the bellies of Iraq's hungry children, and that's reason enough to demand a total audit.
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Dirty charges. Dirty hands. Dirty business all around.
Somewhere in here, perhaps, are insights into why the
world body couldn't seem to be roused from its torpor as
Saddam sneered so openly at umpty-ump formal UN
resolutions. |
