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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayners who wrote (662897)	11/27/2004 11:21:24 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

foxnews.com

To: Wayners who wrote (662897)	11/27/2004 11:26:51 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

Oil for fraud; what's Kofi Annan hiding? 2004-11-27 / Knight Ridder / The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Wednesday: Staffers at U.N. headquarters in New York, disgusted over what they see as Secretary-General Kofi Annan's corrupt management, came close last week to casting a formal vote of no confidence against him. We know how they feel. Annan has presided over the largest scandal in the U.N.'s history: the abuse of the Oil for Food program, which originally was designed to starve Saddam Hussein's regime via economic sanctions without starving the people of Iraq. In the wake of Saddam's defeat, various U.S. investigations have revealed it to be part of a scam of staggering proportions. Last week, a Senate subcommittee reported that the dictator embezzled as much as US$21.3 billion intended to help suffering Iraqis - most of it on Annan's watch. Earlier disclosures in the Duelfer Report indicated that Saddam had worked to undermine the sanctions by paying off friendly U.N. officials and others with million-dollar oil vouchers that were part of the humanitarian program. Among the alleged recipients of Saddam's vouchers: Benon V. Sevan, hand-picked by Annan in 1996 to run Oil for Food. Annan's son, Kojo, has also been implicated. Both deny wrongdoing, but, given the scope of the fraud, it is increasingly difficult to believe that U.N. officials didn't know what was going on. Annan is doing nothing to help us get to the bottom of the scandal. While the United Nations makes a lumbering pretense of investigating itself, Annan stonewalls congressional investigators by refusing time and time again to provide them access to U.N. documents and personnel. These sources could shed light on whether the United Nations served as a money-laundering agency that helped keep Saddam in power - and ordinary Iraqis in misery. Given that the United States is the single greatest financial contributor to the United Nations, Annan is in no position to obstruct indefinitely. Keep pouring on the pressure, Congress. It's important to expose how Saddam gamed a crooked system so the system can be reformed and the United Nations' credibility restored.

To: Wayners who wrote (662897)	11/27/2004 11:28:39 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Oil-for-food scandal over Kofi Annan's son deepens AFP , UNITED NATIONS Sunday, Nov 28, 2004,Page 11 Kojo Annan, son of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was until February paid by a buyer of Iraqi oil under the UN "oil for food program," now the focus of a fraud probe, a UN spokesman said Friday. The younger Annan had earlier been named as a former employee of the Swiss corporation Cotecna until 1998, and it was known that he was paid until 1999. However, it was not previously known that he was on the payroll until February last year, just after the scandal broke. Spokesman Fred Eckhard said Kojo Annan's lawyer, in response to a question from a reporter from the New York Sun, had confirmed the later date. "The lawyer confirmed that indeed it was so," Eckhard said. "He explained that it was part of an open-ended, no-compete contract between Cotecna and Kojo, and said that they had made this information known to the Volcker commission, so it's in the hands of the Volcker commission," he said, referring to former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who head the inquiry. "This runs counter to what we had told you, because it had been our information that those noncompete contract payments had ceased at the end of 1999. I can't explain it," the spokesman said. "All I can say is it'll have to be now for Paul Volcker to explain it, and clearly the information is in his hands." Under the program, which ran from December 1996 until this month, 248 companies in several nations bought Iraqi oil in contracts worth US$64.2 billion, the committee said. In all, 3,545 companies exported goods worth US$32.9 billion to southern and central Iraq, and 941 other companies exported US$6.1 billion's worth to northern Iraq. The oil-for-food plan allowed former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime to ease the burden of international sanctions by selling oil to buy humanitarian supplies. But it mushroomed into the largest aid program in UN history, and critics say Saddam abused the program by evading sanctions and offering vouchers for oil as bribes to hundreds of officials from different countries. Among those under suspicion of having accepted payments from Saddam in return for support against the US-led war are businessmen and politicians in France and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council. The newspaper said the Swiss company paid Kojo Annan around US$2,500 per month.