Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

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Scandal: Anti-U.N. Campaign
Newsweek April 26 issue

United Nations officials are reacting with resentment to a campaign by conservative media and pols alleging that top U.N. officials are implicated in a scandal surrounding a U.N.-operated Oil-for-Food Program that sold Iraqi oil and provided "humanitarian" supplies to Saddam Hussein's regime before the U.S. invasion. Some U.N. officials suspect the scandal was drummed up by elements of the current Iraqi Governing Council—including the controversial Ahmad Chalabi—who fear they could lose power if the United States lets a U.N. envoy assemble a new Iraqi authority to assume sovereignty on June 30.

At the heart of the scandal is a list of 270 names of alleged recipients of Saddam-era Oil-for-Food deals that purportedly generated slush funds for Saddam's regime and easy profits for its foreign collaborators. The list includes prominent international politicians and businessmen and makes an apparent reference to Benon Sevan, the U.N. bureaucrat who administered the program. Iraqi Governing Council adviser Claude Hankes-Drielsma told NEWSWEEK the list was compiled by Iraqi officials after the war on instructions of the Council's finance committee, chaired by Chalabi. He said the list is based on prewar documents that current Iraqi government officials found in Iraqi ministries. He said he personally saw prewar documents implying an interest by Sevan in an Oil-for-Food deal involving a company in Panama.

Through U.N. spokesmen, Sevan has denied any corruption. U.N. officials have also denied published innuendos raising questions about an Oil-for-Food monitoring contract involving a Swiss firm that employed Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son as a consultant. But some on the list have acknowledged involvement in prewar oil deals. The U.N. said last week that Annan intended to appoint a three-man committee headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chief Paul Volcker to investigate Oil-for-Food irregularities. But Volcker wants the U.N. Security Council to grant his panel tough powers—a demand diplomats say may be hard to meet, since Council members like France, China, Russia and Syria bore heavy responsibility for setting prewar Oil-for-Food rules susceptible to corruption by Saddam.

—Mark Hosenball

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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U.N. record in Iraq is strong
By Joy Gordon

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-04-04-oppose_x.htm