UNSCAM makes critics of the US look bad so sweep it under the rug.
Confessio... Um... Admitte... Er... Red-Hande...
Kofi Annan on Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: Someone also very close to you has alleged involvement in this scandal. This is how The San Diego Union Tribune wrote about it. "What particularly troubles are revelations that several hundred individuals, political entities and companies from more than 45 countries profited from doing illicit business with Saddam, accepting his oil contracts and paying the murderous dictator secret kick-backs. That included, according to Iraqi Oil Minister records, U.N. Assistant Secretary General Benon Sevan, executive director of the oil-for-food program, who received a vouch for 11.5 million barrels of oil through the program, enough to turn a profit as much as $3.5 million."
Now, Mr. Sevan has denied that allegation.
SEC'Y-GEN. ANNAN: Yes, sir.
MR. RUSSERT: But NBC News has obtained this letter that was sent on his stationery on April 14. This is just two weeks ago. "I refer to your e-mail ... regarding a request by `a Governmental Authority' for reports ... relating to the Oil-for-Food Programme. ... While we understand Saybolt's"--that's a company--"desire to be cooperative with bodies looking into the Programme ... we would ask that Saybolt address any further requests for documentation or information concerning these matters to us ..."
So Mr. Sevan, who's being investigated, is telling a company that's also being investigated, "Don't cooperate with government authorities unless you clear it with me." Why is he still involved in the investigation?
SEC'Y-GEN. ANNAN: Right. No, I wasn't aware of this confess for--Benon has worked with the U.N. for several decades, and I will be surprised if he's guilty of these accusations.
.....An Instapundit reader notes:
This is particularly interesting since Sevan has been on "vacation" since mid-March in Australia, and is supposed to stay on vacation until he retires. . . . Guess it's a working vacation.
UNSCAMstravaganza
Kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's regime on contracts signed under the United Nations' oil-for-food programme were far higher than the 10 per cent rake-off previously assumed to be the norm. . . .
Joseph Christoff, a GAO official, said that the audits were shown routinely only to Benon Sevan, the UN Under Secretary General who ran the programme whose name was on a list of 270 companies and individuals who allegedly received vouchers. (Link)
The United Nations has threatened to fire two officials who wrote an expose of sleaze and corruption during its peacekeeping missions of the 1990s.
Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, is understood to have favoured an attempt to block publication of the memoir, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, a True Story from Hell on Earth, due to be published next month.
Still reeling from the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, officials in the upper echelons of the UN are alarmed by the promised revelations of wild sex parties, petty corruption, and drug use - diversions that helped the peacekeepers to cope with alternating states of terror and boredom. (Link)
If that wasn't enough, it appears that a lot of journalists were on Saddam's payroll, as well. How utterly despicable, but totally unsurprising.
freewillblog.com
UN chief's career clouded
By Per Ahlmark
May 03, 2004
NO other organisation is regarded with such respect as the United Nations. This is perhaps natural, for the UN embodies some of humanity's noblest dreams.
But, as the current scandal surrounding the UN's administration of the Iraq oil-for-food program demonstrates, and as the world remembers the Rwanda genocide that began 10 years ago, respect for the UN should be viewed as something of a superstition, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan as its false prophet.
Not since Dag Hammarskjold has a UN leader been as acclaimed as Annan. Up to a point, this is understandable. Annan usually maintains an unruffled, dignified demeanour. He has charm and &ndash many say &ndash charisma. But a leader ought to be judged by his or her actions when important matters are at stake. Annan's failures in such situations are almost invariably glossed over.
Between 1993 and 1996, Annan was assistant secretary-general for UN peacekeeping operations and then undersecretary-general.
One of the two great disasters for which he bears a large share of the blame is the Serbian slaughter of 7000 people in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, perhaps the worst massacre in post-war Europe.
In 1993, Bosnia's Muslims were promised that UN forces would protect them. This commitment was a precondition of their consent to disarm. The UN declared Srebrenica a "safe haven" to be "protected" by 600 Dutch UN troops.
In July 1995, Serb forces attacked. The UN did not honour its pledge. Annan's staff released evasive, confused statements. Oblivious, apparently, to the dreadfulness of the situation, they failed to sound the alarm properly and did nothing to intervene.
The Dutch fired not a single shot. NATO air power could have halted the Serbs, but Annan did not ask for NATO intervention.
Ratko Mladic, the Serb commander and war criminal, deported the women and children under the eyes of the UN, while capturing and murdering the men and adolescent boys.
No one should be surprised by the UN's inaction, because only the year before it had demonstrated utter incompetence in facing the fastest genocide in history &ndash the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in just 100 days. UN forces in Rwanda in 1994 were Annan's responsibility before and during the crisis.
Annan was alerted four months before Hutu activists began their mass killings by a fax message from Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general commanding UN forces in Rwanda. Dallaire described in detail how the Hutus were planning "anti-Tutsi extermination". He identified his source "a Hutu" and reported that arms were ready for the impending ethnic cleansing.
Dallaire requested permission to evacuate his informant and to seize the arms cache. Annan rejected both demands, proposing that Dallaire make the informant's identity known to Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, even though the informant had expressly named the president's closest entourage as the authors of the genocide blueprint.
Annan maintained his extreme passiveness even after the airplane crash that killed Habyarimana, which signalled the genocide's start, helped by the indifference of the great powers.
One might think Annan far too compromised to become secretary-general but the UN doesn't work that way. Instead of being forced to resign after Rwanda and Srebrenica, he was promoted to the post.
That is the culture of the UN: believe the best of barbarians, do nothing to provoke controversy among superiors, and let others be the butt of criticism afterwards. Even subsequent revelations about Annan's responsibility for the disasters in Rwanda and Bosnia did not affect his standing. On the contrary, he was unanimously re-elected and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The media sometimes ratchets up admiration for Annan by pointing out that his wife, Nane Annan, is Swedish and a close relative of Raoul Wallenberg. We are meant to infer that, on top of all his talents, Annan shares the ideals embodied during the last days of World War II by the foremost Swede of modern times.
But Wallenberg's name should make us even more dismayed about Annan's record. In Hungary, Wallenberg exploited every contact, resorting to shady tricks, bribes and other stratagems to save as many people as possible from the Holocaust. He never allowed himself to be duped by Hitler's cronies.
Perhaps no one's achievement should be judged by comparison with that of Wallenberg &ndash a titan of strength, courage and perseverance.
Annan cannot plead he faced any risk to his safety, whereas Wallenberg in 1944 and 1945 was in constant peril. Nor can he excuse himself by saying no warnings were given, or that he lacked resources, or that he did not have the international position to intervene.
Annan had at his disposal all the instruments of power and opinion Wallenberg lacked. Yet, when thousands or hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to mortal threats he had the authority and duty to avert, alleviate, or at least announce, he failed.
Now, despite revelations about bribery in the UN's oil-for-food program for Iraq, the world is clamouring to entrust Annan with the future of more than 20 million Iraqis who survived Saddam Hussein dictatorship. That is because of who Annan is and what the UN has become: an institution in which no shortcoming, it seems, goes unrewarded.
Per Ahlmark is a former deputy prime minister of Sweden.
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