Annan's tantrum a sign of U.N. rot

January 1, 2006
Dailybreeze.com
Original Source: http://www.dailybreeze.com/opinion/articles/2139937.html

The U.N. Secretary General's refusal to answer questions about his son's perks in the oil-for-food scandal shows how badly the world body needs a thorough house cleaning.
Daily Breeze editorial
The spring scrum over President Bush's nomination of blustery John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was largely but not wholly partisan. Many people, including some Republicans, doubted the wisdom of naming a U.N. envoy who held the world body in such open disdain. But what was striking was how many Democrats didn't just dislike Bolton's style; they considered his calls for U.N. reform to be overwrought. California Sen. Barbara Boxer led this pack, expressing horror at Bolton's view of the United Nations as bloated, ineffective and corrupt. In the wake of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's embarrassing and revealing dust-up with a British journalist last week, we wonder what Boxer and her pals would say now. Annan's tantrum over one tough question -- and, more broadly, his resentment of media coverage of his complacent U.N. stewardship -- illustrates both the extent of the United Nations' rot and why it will never reform without external pressure.
The tiff began when James Bone of The London Times asked Annan at a press conference about a Mercedes that Annan's son Kojo had purchased in his father's name in order to receive a diplomatic discount and tax break of more than $20,000. The scam was disclosed in Paul Volcker's report earlier this year on the United Nations' scandalous handling of the Iraqi oil-for-food program, which degenerated into a multibillion-dollar morass of graft and bribery. Among its many troubling findings, the report chronicled Kojo Annan's employment by a Swiss firm that won a lucrative U.N. contract for work in Iraq.
Rather than answer Bone's question, Annan berated the reporter as an overgrown schoolboy and called him an embarrassment to his profession.
While Annan's tone was unusual, his thrust was the same as it has been for months: decrying the media for their investigatory zeal.
But the problem for Annan is that the Volcker report raised as many questions as it answered, and that he continues to act in ways that invite new questions.
It's not just Annan's refusal to acknowledge that his son used his status in shady, appalling ways. It's that the Volcker report that Annan implies is a vindication of his purity actually showed him to be an impediment to the inquiry, displaying the sort of memory of convenience that one expects of a fraud defendant, not the head of the United Nations.
Just what was in the files that Annan's former chief of staff shredded?
Meanwhile, U.N. officials show little interest in helping authorities bring Benon Sevan, the bribe-taking former head of the oil-for-food program, to justice.
No wonder Bone and other journalists have so many pointed questions for the secretary-general. He has so much to answer for. And no wonder Bolton insists that the next secretary-general -- Annan's term ends Dec. 31 -- must be a tough administrator committed to reform, not an Annan acolyte. It is time for change at the United Nations -- profound change.
If Boxer and other U.N. apologists don't like it, tough luck.