Oil-For-Food
Scandal: Washingtons Preemptive Strike On The UN
By Peter Symonds
07 April 2005
World
Socialist Web
A
second interim report into the United Nations so-called oil-for-food
scandal released last week exonerated secretary-general Kofi Annan of
the main accusation against him: that he improperly used his influence
to steer a UN contract worth $10 million a year to a Swiss firm Contecna
that employed his son Kojo.
The findings have
done nothing, however, to halt the campaign of innuendo, exaggeration
and slander by the Republican Party rightwing in the US and its mouthpieces
such as the Wall Street Journal against Annan and the UN. One of the
main cheerleaders, US Congressman Norm Coleman of Minnesota, immediately
reiterated his demand for Annans head, declaring: His lack
of leadership combined with conflicts of interest and a lack of responsibility
and accountability point to one, and only one, outcome: his resignation.
In all probability,
some companies and individuals profitted handsomely from the $65 billion
UN program that permitted the Saddam Hussein regime to sell oil and
buy a limited range of humanitarian goods. The scale of the exercise,
however, pales into insignificance alongside the current plundering
of Iraq by Halliburton, Bechtel and other US corporations with close
connections to the Bush administration and its illegal occupation of
the country.
It also appears
possible that Annans son may have traded on his fathers
name to assist in obtaining a job and to set up in business. He would
not be the first to do so. In his own sordid business dealings in the
1990s involving the Texas Rangers baseball team and Harken Energy, US
President George W. Bush managed to leverage his family connection to
President George Bush senior into a small personal fortune worth millions.
The stench of hypocrisy
and cynicism that surrounds the oil-for-food inquiry underscores the
fact that it has little to do with allegations of corruption against
Annan and other UN officials. Like other multilateral international
institutions, the UN has become a battleground where the US is seeking
to assert its unchallenged supremacy over its imperialist rivals. The
Bush administration is exploiting the scandal as one means for undermining
the UN, either to force through changes, or failing that, to neuter
or even destroy the organisation.
The oil-for-food
investigation, set up last April, is headed by former US Federal Reserve
Board chairman Paul Volcker. Its two other members are Justice Richard
Goldstone, the South African judge who prosecuted war crimes in the
former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and Professor Mark Pieth, a Swiss academic
specialist on money-laundering.
The committee has
now produced two interim reports and plans to release its final report
in June. The first in February accused the UN head of the oil-for-food
program, Benon Sevan, of a grave conflict of interest for
steering contracts toward a company owned by an Egyptian friend. Sevan,
who was suspended and faces legal charges, denied the allegations and
said he was being made a political scapegoat. A second UN official,
Joseph Stephanides, was alleged to have interferred in the bidding for
an oil-for-food contract.
Last weeks
second report, which focussed on accusations against Annan and his son,
was potentially more explosive. Elements of the report were leaked to
the American press, prompting UN spokesman Fred Eckhard to remark that
the UN and Annan were suffering death by a thousand cuts.
The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled Kojos
Iraq Connections implying that Kofi Annan had met his son and
a business associate and discussed their plans to establish companies
to take advantage of the oil-for-food program. The companies were never
set up but that, and the lack of any evidence, did not stop the newspaper
from declaring that Annan had questions to answer.
The Volcker report,
however, unambiguously found that there was no evidence that Annan assisted
the Swiss firm Contecna to win a UN contract in 1998 to monitor goods
entering Iraq as part of the UN program. It also found nothing convincing
to show that the secretary general even knew about the contract. Kojo
Annan was employed by the company in West Africa, not Iraq or the Middle
East, from 1995 to 1997 and then as a consultant until the end of 1998.
The report described the investigation instigated by Kofi Annan when
news of the deal became public in 1999 as inadequate.
The report accused
both Annans son and the company of deliberately concealing the
extent of their relationship from Kofi Annan. Contecna kept Kojo Annan
on its payroll until 2004, it claims, to prevent him from working for
a competitor in West Africa. Kofi Annans retired chief of staff
Iqbal Riza was criticised for shredding documents covering 1997 to 1999the
period under investigation. Riza rejected allegations of wrongdoing,
saying the shredded files were copies of documents available in the
UN archives.
Commenting on the
reports findings, Kofi Annan declared: After so many distressing
and untrue allegations have been made against me, this exoneration by
the independent inquiry obviously comes as a great relief. Asked
if he intended to resign, the career diplomat responded with uncharacteristic
bluntness: Hell, no. The reaction reflects the pressure
of a none-too-subtle campaign by Washington to pursue the scandal as
a means of disciplining or ousting Annan, despite his past willingness
to do US bidding.
The international
response to the Volcker report reflected continuing tensions between
the US and its European rivals. While not openly siding with Congressman
Colemans open call for Annans resignation, White House support
for Annan was far from unqualified. US State Department spokesman Adam
Ereli declared that Washington would continue to work with Annan, but
added the findings were troubling, particularly the failure to
recognise the appearance of a conflict of interest.
In its second opinion
piece in two days, the Wall Street Journal raked over the scandal again.
After dismissing the reports exoneration of Annan, it concluded:
In the broader sense, however, what Mr Volckers report reveals
is an adverse finding against the Secretary General: That
is, patterns of willful neglect, conflict of interest and incompetence
that would have any business CEO out on his ear. While differing
in tone, editorials in the New York Times and Washington Post followed
essentially the same line: despite the lack of evidence, Annan had something
to answer for.
European leaders
were more forthcoming in their support for Annan. But far from providing
any forthright defence of Annan and risking conflict with Washington,
they focussed attention on the secretary generals role in guiding
UN reforms. Marc Bichler, deputy ambassador of Luxembourg, which currently
holds the EU presidency, said Annan was playing an important leadership
role at the UN, notably with regard to the process of UN reform.
Former British foreign
minister Robin Cook was one of the few figures to point to the provocative
character of the UN scandal. In a comment in the Guardian newspaper
entitled Why American neocons are out for Kofi Annans blood,
Cook argued that the White House was out to derail the proposed UN reforms.
On the campaign against Annan, he declared:
There is a
breathtaking hypocrisy to the indictment of Kofi Annan over the oil-for-food
program for Iraq. It was the US and UK who devised the program, piloted
the UN resolutions that gave it authority, sat on the committee to administer
it and ran the blockade to enforce it. I know because I spent a high
proportion of my time at the Foreign Office trying to make a success
of it. If there were problems with it then Washington and London should
be in the dock alongside the luckless Kofi Annan, who happened to be
secretary general at the time.
Cooks comments
underscore the selective character of the accusations against Annan.
Based on documents seized in Iraq, a CIA report outlined the extent
of Saddam Husseins efforts to circumvent the UN sanctions regime,
maintained for more than a decade after the Gulf War of 1990-91. Of
the estimated $10 billion connected to so-called illicit activities,
only $2 billion had any association with the oil-for-food program.
Most of the money
was not bribes and kickbacks, but oil smuggling on a massive scaleprincipally
through two close US allies, Jordan and Turkeyto which Washington
turned a blind eye. The US and Britain, whose warplanes flew daily missions
over Iraq to enforce the so-called northern and southern no-fly
zones, were in the best position to monitor smuggling. Moreover, two
pro-US Kurdish parties, who collaborated closely with the CIA and other
US agencies, made substantial profits from the illicit trade that passed
through the northern no-fly zone to Turkey.
To top it off, US
officials sat on the UN Security Council oversight committee that monitored
the oil-for-food program and was ultimately responsible for reviewing
contracts. Not surprisingly, US agencies, which did not hesitate in
providing ammunition against Annan and the UN, were uncooperative when
it came to efforts to investigate the UN oversight committee and the
role of the US.
Asked recently if
his committee confronted any walls in the UN investigation,
Volcker replied: Yes. Walls is maybe too strongobstacles,
yes. He said that one US agency, which he would not name, has
just flatly ignored requests for help. His colleague Mark Pieth
commented: We are simply astonished that we have not gotten more
help from the US, because why would we have an issue with the US?
Pieth accused the
US State Department of pressuring the committee to limit its investigations.
They are saying, you arent to look at what member
states have been doing. Your role is to look at the UN officials.
And we are saying, Well, we are looking at the program and its
obviously interesting to look at how it was set up.
At the heart of
the oil-for-food scandal are sharp differences over the future of the
UN. Annan unveiled a reform package on March 21, firstly, to resurrect
the UNs tattered image as a body concerned with peace, justice
and ending poverty and, secondly, to deal with the sharp rifts that
were most graphically revealed in the conflict between the US and Europe
over the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Annans plan
seeks to accommodate to the demands of the US administration. It includes
replacing the UN Human Rights Council, which has long been a target
of US criticism, and tightening the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty in line with US demands to outlaw all uranium enrichment and
plutonium reprocessing, including fuel for power reactors.
Annan also called
for a UN resolution that would sanction preemptive military attacks
against imminent threatsa measure that would go some
way to legitimising wars of aggression, such as the US-led invasion
of Iraq. While it would prefer the UNs formal blessing for its
militarism, Washington is not, however, prepared to tolerate any restraint
on its actionseither by resolution or a formal vote involving
other powers.
As former British
foreign minister Cook noted in his Guardian comment, Annans proposals
still envisage a collective UN leadership. The neocons who run
the US administration want supremacy, not equality, for America and
hanker after an alternative model of global governance in which the
world is put to right not by the tedious process of building international
consensus, but by the straightforward exercise of US puissance,
he wrote.
The fact that Annan
is in the spotlight over the oil-for-food scandal demonstrates that
the US is not willing to brook any opposition. Annan was installed as
UN Secretary General in 1997 through the efforts of the Clinton administration
to block the reappointment of Bhoutros Bhoutros-Ghali, of whom Washington
was critical. A career UN diplomat, Annan has always been cautious not
to offend the major powers, particularly the US. If he felt compelled
to make timid criticisms of the US invasion of Iraq, it was because
he attempted to straddle a deep divide between the competing interests
of the US and European powers.
The attacks on Annans
credibility are in line with the Bush administrations appointment
of arch neo-conservatives to top international bodiesJohn Bolton,
former US undersecretary of state, as US ambassador to the UN, and Paul
Wolfowitz, former US deputy secretary of defence and the chief architect
of the Iraq invasion, to head the World Bank. Despite recent US diplomatic
efforts to smooth over relations with Europe, these appointments, along
with the ongoing oil-for-food scandal, demonstrate that the Bush administrations
aim is to subjugate or destroy these institutions.
The United Nations
has never been an organisation for achieving peace, democratic rights
and better living standards. It has always been, as Lenin said of its
League of Nations predecessor, a thieves kitchen where the
major imperialist powers settled their disputes and divvied up the spoils.
If the institution is now in a crisis, it reflects a falling out among
the thieves. Deep and irreconcilable differences exist that cannot be
ended through the normal channels of diplomatic horsetrading, presaging
open conflict and war.