'Annan will be a lame duck'

[emad]

The scandal has cast doubt on the future of the UN secretary general

Monday February 7, 2005
The Guardian

New York Times
Editorial, February 5
"A commission investigating the United Nations' oil-for-food programme in Iraq has issued an interim report that sheds some light... this much ballyhooed scandal. The panel has found persuasive evidence that Benon Sevan, who ran the programme, used his influence with Iraq improperly to help a small company gain profitable rights to sell Iraqi oil while he was simultaneously urging the UN to provide greater help in rebuilding Iraq's oil equipment...

"But whether this amounts to small-scale corruption by a greedy official or a large-scale subversion of the entire programme is not clear. Nothing in this initial report gets at the core element of the scandal: how was Iraq able to manipulate the programme to amass perhaps $2bn <£1.1bn> in illicit revenues to sustain the regime and buy embargoed goods?"

Washington Post
Editorial, February 5

"The preliminary report... is not a whitewash. Despite dark hints that Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who led the investigation, was too chummy with UN bosses, Thursday's report did name names...

"The question now is what, if anything, these findings say about the about the United Nations itself... Critics who see something unusual or unique... should look harder at the behaviour of American, British or other companies in Iraq during that period... More to the point, UN security council members, including the US, turned a blind eye to allegations of corruption while it was going on, and they may even have used it to benefit US allies in the region...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/editor/story/0,12900,1407155,00.html