U.N. rights one wrong

August 31, 2005
The Boston Herald
Original Source: http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=100346

Yesterday officials of the United Nations took a baby step toward righting one of the many wrongs committed as part of what we have come to call the Oil-for-Food scandal. Maybe, just maybe, someone at the U.N. gets it. 

The world body has asked nine of its own agencies to turn over $40 million in reserves from the Oil-for-Food program to a fund controlled by the new government of Iraq. 

Of course, the commission headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volker, which has been investigating the program for the past nine months, is expected to make its final report next week. It wouldn't be a reach to think that U.N. officials, particularly Secretary-General Kofi Annan, see the wisdom of anticipating recommendations from the Volker Commission. 

The Oil-for-Food program was set up during the U.N.-imposed economic sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's regime to assure that proceeds from the country's oil production were used to provide humanitarian aid directly to Iraq's people. Sadly, however, the program ``fed'' a number of corrupt U.N. bureaucrats and the private sector contractors they did business with. Some are already being prosecuted. 

But prosecutions don't fill hospital supply closets or build roads and bridges. 

The Associated Press reported yesterday that the Volker Commission found that between $33 million and $45 million in Oil-for-Food proceeds had been allocated to nine U.N. agencies working in Iraq, but never been spent by them in Iraq nor had the money ever been accounted for. That is the pool of money which now has been ordered turned over to the Development Fund for Iraq. 

The U.N. can never make up for the deprivation caused to the people of Iraq by its own corruption. This, at least, is a down payment.