To: dkgross who wrote (140152 ) 12/2/2004 5:23:39 PM From: jmhollen Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 150070 "...With a little touch of down home Texas class..........................Bush sidesteps Annan resignation issue By KEN GUGGENHEIM ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Thursday declined to endorse a Republican senator's call for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign but did not offer Annan any words of support. Asked by reporters if Annan should step down because of allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, Bush said he was awaiting the results of investigations. "I look forward to a full disclosure of the facts, a good, honest appraisal of that which went on, and it's important for the integrity of the organization," he said. Annan has appointed former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head an inquiry into the program. Several congressional committees also are conducting investigations. The program began in 1996 when Iraq was under U.N. penalties. It allowed Saddam Hussein's government to sell oil and use the revenue to buy food, medicine and other necessities. But several reports have said that Saddam used bribes, kickbacks and other forms of corruption to make money from the program. The Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee found that Saddam raised more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue by subverting U.N. penalties and that about one-third of that total came from the oil-for-food program. The subcommittee chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., has called on Annan to step down because "the most extensive fraud in the history of the U.N. occurred on his watch." Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office at the start of a meeting with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Bush stressed the importance of a "full and fair and open accounting of the oil-for-food program."seattlepi.nwsource.com .