Tuesday, August 23, 2005 
U.N. credibility is gone without leadership change 
Let's see, the head of the United Nations is caught in a lie, its former senior procurement officer has pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud and money laundering and there is persuasive evidence that the U.N.'s former head of the oil-for-food program in Iraq accepted kickbacks. 
And this is the world body that keeps saying trust us to help resolve world conflicts? 
An effective body to encourage communications among the various cultures of the world is needed, but the United Nations has not been effective and Secretary-General Kofi Annan's leadership has been so compromised that nothing short of an administrative overhaul and a showing of backbone will give promise to what should be an august group. 
Annan should step down before his term expires on Dec. 31, 2006. 
The United Nations has proven that its sanctions are worth no more than the paper they're written on. 
The United Nations never enforced sanctions imposed on Iraq following the unprovoked 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the U.N.'s favorite policemen of the world -- the United States -- decided it would enforce the sanctions. The merits of the U.S. action can be debated ad nauseum, but this debacle proved the U.N.'s warnings are stronger than its backbone to enforce its own sanctions. 
The sanctions included a so-called oil-for-food program that allowed Iraq to sell limited amounts of its oil to provide food and health care for its residents. Instead, U.N. officials were paid to look the other way while Saddam Hussein sold oil to other countries to enrich his lifestyle. 
Alexander Yakovlev, the U.N.'s senior procurement officer in the oil-for-food program who resigned in June, pled guilty recently to conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering. Almost simultaneously, a commission appointed to look into kickbacks implicated Benson Sevan, who was head of the oil-for-food program. Sevan insisted he had done nothing wrong, but resigned from the United Nations and returned to his native Cyprus, a country from which he cannot be extradicted to the United States if charges are filed. 
It may be difficult for all of the U.N. nations to get too excited about these kickbacks because they are a way of doing business in some societies, but kickbacks aren't acceptable in the United States, which foots more than its proportionate share of the costs to operate the United Nations. 
A recent crowning blow to the United Nations were the comments about Annan. 
The same commission that looked into the oil-for-food program, said there was evidence that Annan was aware that a firm his son worked for had sought a U.N. contract, of which Annan had earlier said he was unaware. However, the commission said there was no evidence that the secretary-general used his influence to help his son's firm get a contract. 
Annan's memory lapse might be overlooked if not for the other problems. However, the ongoing problems suggest a need for drastic changes, from the top down, to restore the U.N.'s credibility -- at least its credibility with the hand that feeds it the most, the United States. 
Perhaps a major test of the U.N.'s resolve to unite countries and encourage better communications will come next month at its world summit when it will again be asked to renounce terrorism throughout the world. 
A body that won't even adopt a resolution condemning terrorism because it can't come to agreement on the word's meaning isn't going to be of much help to anyone. 
We need a body to bring nations together to communicate and deal with international issues effectively. We know that any such body, by its nature, will have imperfections, and that we should not destroy the body because of them. But we do need to press for improvement, and a change of leadership at this time would be a step in that direction.