US: Annan Isn’t Exonerated
Charles Johnson
Fri Apr 22, 2005 at 10:10 am PDT • Views: 132
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is claiming that an interim report on the Oil-For-Food scam exonerated him, but the US begs to differ.
A U.S. State Department official said Thursday that an interim report on corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program did not exonerate Kofi Annan as the secretary-general had claimed.
The statement from Mark Lagon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, was the first time the United States has rebutted Annan’s claim he had been cleared by the committee, made shortly after the release of the report on March 29.
In fact, the Independent Inquiry Committee’s interim report faulted Annan’s management of the oil-for-food program, which was set up to help ordinary Iraqis cope with crippling U.N. sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s regime after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The committee did clear him of meddling in the awarding of a U.N. contract to Cotecna, the Swiss employer of his son, Kojo Annan. But it also said secretary-general did not sufficiently investigate possible conflicts of interest surrounding the contract.
“We aren’t calling for the resignation of the secretary-general, however it is probably an exaggeration to suggest that the Volcker report exonerated the secretary-general,” Lagon said.
Frank says: