U.N. credibility on sanctions in 'balance'

David R. Sands
February 16, 2005
The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20050215-091410-3340r.htm
The United Nations' credibility to administer future sanctions programs hangs in the balance unless the world body comes clean on its mismanagement of Iraq's oil-for-food program, a leading U.S. lawmaker said yesterday. 
    Sen. Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is heading a Senate investigation into the scandal, said he is troubled by revelations of high-level influence-buying and corruption in the program. 
    I believe the credibility of the U.N. to monitor any future sanctions programs hangs in the balance unless the corruption and mismanagement in [the oil-for-food program] are identified and rooted out, Mr. Coleman said at a subcommittee hearing yesterday. 
    But Kojo Annan, the son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan who has been tied to a questionable oil-for-food contract, denied he had done anything improper and accused Mr. Coleman of playing politics. 
    In his first extensive public statement on the scandal, the younger Mr. Annan said all his consulting work for a Swiss company that won a key oil-for-food contract in 1998 consisted of developing new business in Africa and had nothing to do with Iraq. 
    Insisting he had cooperated with Mr. Coleman's investigators, the younger Mr. Annan said he could assume only that Mr. Coleman's continued questioning of his business dealings were politically motivated and intended to harm my father and the United Nations. 
    In New York, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette announced the United Nations now would provide internal agency audits to member-states and publish more contract and procurement data on the Internet. 
    She acknowledged that the changes were in part a response to problems identified last month by a U.N.-appointed oil-for-food probe headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. 
    We are taking to heart everything he's put in his report, Miss Frechette told reporters. 
    U.S. and private investigators say dictator Saddam Hussein siphoned off at least $10 billion during the seven-year oil-for-food program in Iraq before it closed in 2003, in smuggled oil and in kickbacks on humanitarian goods bought with approved oil sales. 
    The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on investigations, of which Mr. Coleman is chairman, this week made public internal Iraqi oil ministry documents listing Benon Sevan, the suspended U.N. undersecretary who ran the oil-for-food program, as a recipient of valuable oil allocations that could be sold to oil marketing firms. 
    Mr. Sevan's attorney this week categorically denied that the Cypriot diplomat had been given oil allocations. 
    Senate investigators also found documents suggesting Kojo Annan had far more extensive duties than previously acknowledged with Cotecna Inspection S.A., the Swiss company that won a key inspection contract under the oil-for-food regime, including a September 1998 proposal for an unspecified New York-based business operation. 
    Cotecna Chief Executive Officer Robert M. Massey, appearing voluntarily under oath, backed the younger Mr. Annan's statement in his testimony. 
    The employment of Kojo Annan was in connection with the company's substantial work in West Africa exclusively and had absolutely no relationship to Cotecna's selection for the [oil-for-food] program, he said. 
    But Cotecna executives could not explain why there was no summary in company files of Kojo Annan's 15-day marketing mission to the U.N. General Assembly in the fall of 1998, or why a postscript to an internal memo noting Kojo Annan's relationship with his father was deleted when first given to Senate investigators. 
    Mr. Coleman said he was troubled by the omissions and by what he said was continued stonewalling by the United Nations. 
    U.N. officials have offered to make the program's chief auditor available privately to U.S. investigators, but Dileep Nair, undersecretary-general for internal oversight operations, declined an invitation to testify at yesterday's hearing. 
    Mr. Coleman said, I am deeply troubled when representations of cooperation result in an empty witness chair. 
    •Betsy Pisik in New York contributed to this report.