Annan exoneration claim too hasty - U.S.

By Irwin Arieff 
April 21,2005
Reuters
Original Source: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=8260683&type=worldNews

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Bush administration said on Thursday U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had been too hasty to claim he had been exonerated in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal and would not rule out he might eventually resign. 

That report did not exonerate him, said U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Lagon, referring to the findings of an inquiry into the U.N. oil-for-food program led by Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman. 

On the possibility Annan might one day resign, Lagon said, His future is not certain. 
But he added: It's his decision. He'll be deciding. We're not calling for his resignation. 
The Bush administration has been careful not to call for the resignation of Annan since the oil-for-food probe began last year. 

The U.S. official, the deputy head of the State Department office for international organizations, which includes the United Nations, made the remarks in an interview with Reuters and in a briefing with a small group of reporters during a visit to U.N. headquarters. 

The Volcker panel's latest report, issued on March 29, concluded that Annan did not influence the award of a U.N. contract to a firm that employed his son but it faulted him for conducting a superficial probe of the controversy. 

Hell no! Annan said when asked if he would resign as a result of the report, as some U.S. lawmakers had demanded. 

After so many distressing and untrue allegations have been made against me, this exoneration by the independent inquiry obviously comes as a great relief, Annan said at the time. 

The oil-for-food program was set up to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. 

CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS 
But the United Nations has been pelted with allegations of misconduct and corruption in the way it administered the program since it was shut down in 2003. 

In the latest case, Maurice Strong, an influential Canadian entrepreneur and senior Annan adviser, withdrew as Annan's senior adviser on North Korea on Wednesday while investigators probed his ties to a lobbyist suspected of bribing U.N. officials with Iraqi funds. 

Known worldwide for his work on the environment, Strong, 76, acknowledged this week he had business dealings in 1997 on a normal commercial basis with South Korean lobbyist and businessman Tongsun Park, who had been at the center of a 1977 influence-peddling scandal in Washington. 

According to a criminal complaint filed by U.S. federal prosecutors last week, Park told an informant he had invested about $1 million in an unnamed Canadian company set up by the son of a high-ranking U.N. official, who was not identified. 

Strong has now confirmed that he was that U.N. official, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported on Thursday. 
The company that Park had invested in was Cordex Petroleums Inc., a Calgary oil company, the newspaper said. 

Strong and his son Frederick Strong were major investors in Cordex in the 1990s, along with CSL Group Inc., a holding company owned by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, it said. 
Frederick Strong was Cordex's president when it filed for bankruptcy protection in March 1999, the newspaper said. 

The company's main investments were in oil properties in Chile and Argentina and it had nothing to do with Iraq, the Globe and Mail said, quoting Frederick Strong. 

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