The U.N. Drama
New York Sun Staff Editorial
September 2, 2005
Sometime in the next few days, we predict, a new round of calls is going to be heard for the resignation of the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. We don't say that with any pleasure, though these columns were probably the first among the newspapers to issue such a call. But two dramatic events are about to unfold, and both underline the sad state of the United Nations on its 60th birthday, which will be marked, between September 14 and 16, with pomp and circumstance by 178 heads of state or government.
One thing that is going to happen is the release, on Wednesday, of a report from the committee the secretary-general was forced to establish to investigate the largest humanitarian program in the United Nations' history, the oil-for-food program for Iraq. We do not have information from the report of the team headed by Paul Volcker, but it is expected in Turtle Bay to be an encompassing evaluation of the program's management. It would be extremely difficult for the former chairman of the Federal Reserve to give high marks to Mr. Annan's management skills.
So far, Mr. Volcker implicated, to name a few, Mr. Annan's handpicked oil-for-food chief, Benon Sevan, for taking a bribe; Mr. Annan's trusted chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, for shredding reams of oil-for-food documents; and a cousin and brother-in-law of Mr. Annan's predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for bribe taking. The question of Mr. Boutros-Ghali's own involvement in the scandal might be answered next week.
But the most interesting questions yet to be answered are what did Mr. Annan know about the hiring of Cotecna, when did he know it, and what did he do to influence the institution he heads to hire the company that employed his son, Kojo? A contemporaneous note from a family friend of the Annans', Cotecna's own Michael Wilson, indicates that, to say the least, Mr. Annan knew about the Cotecna oil-for-food bid.
This is the context in which to view the second development coming up at the United Nations, Mr. Annan's reform plan. As the oil-for-food scandal was closing in on Mr. Annan's camarilla, his aides wrote a booklet, In Larger Freedom, that led to a detailed General Assembly outcome document, which most member states were all too happy to sign in advance of the summit. Most, that is, except for America.
Since June, the Bush administration has been voicing reservations. It opposes any attempt to muzzle legally its right to employ its military for benevolent causes; it refuses to isolate Israelis as the only victims not included in a definition of terrorism; and it is, as the largest donor of foreign aid, refusing to yield to a U.N.-dictated global GNP-based tax on rich nations. With the arrival of Ambassador Bolton at the United States mission, all this has been brought into sharp relief. America's interests are being looked at with an assiduousness rarely seen.
But it is not simply Mr. Bolton, or America, voicing concern at Mr. Annan's package of reforms. Veto wielding Russia, for one, has sent letters to member states outlining detailed opposition to most provisions of the outcome document. The growing disagreements on that document reflect not the rejectionism of influential member states, but a lack of realism - the surfeit of desperation - with which Mr. Annan's team cobbled together its reform scheme.
The United Nations badly needs reform - so badly, in fact, that it most likely will be unable to undertake the necessary steps to achieve it. One of the things that is becoming clear as the oil-for-food scandal unfolds and as the 60th anniversary summit nears is that reform of the United Nations is going to have to start with a thorough house-cleaning among its leadership and a fresh start with new idealists at the helm.