Resign? Hell No!

By Ian Williams, AlterNet. Posted April 1, 2005.

“Hell no!” said Kofi Annan when asked whether he would resign after the Volcker Report effectively cleared him of using any influence on behalf of Cotecna, the company where his son Kojo worked. It was good to see Annan in fighting mode instead of adopting the long-suffering Job-like posture favored by the U.N. when the White House chooses to tests its faith with plagues of deranged conservatives and ambassadors.

Apart from turning the other cheek, the other grave sin of the U.N. is its naïve assumption that its American interlocutors are susceptible to rational arguments, evidence, and similar devices of logic. But hell hath no fury like an American conservative cheated of his prey, and so the right-wing media refuses to admit that former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker’s conclusion -- “there is no evidence of wrongdoing” -- is in fact a “not guilty" verdict.

Many of his persecutors have already insulated themselves from reality by preemptively calling the Volcker Inquiry a “whitewash,” even as they condemn the use of residual Oil for Food funds to pay for it -- money that rightfully should have been used to feed starving Iraqi children. One would be tempted to lend them a handkerchief to wipe the crocodile tears of these good samaritans if only they were as eager to complain about other travesties, as, say, the $30 billion or so that were sequestrated in reparations from the Oil For Food fund to pay compensation for the first Gulf War. Or the five percent of Iraqi oil revenue that is still being deducted from all Iraqi oil sales to pay reparations to Kuwait. Or the eight-plus billion dollars left in the Oil For Food fund that was handed over to the Coalition Provisional Authority after the invasion, and which the U.S. administration admits (quietly) has never been accounted for properly -- but a lot of which we know ended up in Halliburton’s coffers on no-bid contracts.

Not one of these critics has raised a peep at this looting of the Iraqi people’s patrimony.

All That Money, So Little Crime

Kofi Annan should have given the whole baying crowd the finger from the beginning instead of launching this massive and expensive inquiry to scour lint from the U.N.’s navel. Sixty million dollars later, the Volcker panel has so far made the following sensational discoveries: Oil for Food chief Benon Sevan received $160,000 that he claims but cannot prove came from his deceased aunt; Dileep Nair of the Office of Internal Oversight Services -- an agency that makes the Keystone Kops look professional -- used some $200,000 in Oil for Food funds to hire a compatriot; and Kojo Annan did not declare $200,000 of his earnings from Cotecna.

And then there's the seemingly incriminating fact that Iqbal Riza, Annan’s chief of staff, "allowed" his secretary to shred three years worth of files. An amazing coincidence indeed that his secretary should make such a request just as the Security Council requested Annan's office to preserve all relevant documents. But Riza -- like other U.N. officials of his generation -- is not a big fan of transparency. It's likely that he simply assumed that secrecy would be the best way to deal with media scrutiny -- even when there was nothing to hide.

Each of these findings suggest mere improprieties rather than illegal abuses of power, according to Volcker -- in other words, almost nothing to justify this egregious waste of resources. It's a bit like the FBI handing Al Capone a parking ticket after a two-year stakeout in Chicago.

Let the Games Begin

On the other hand, the best part of this inquiry is yet to come and it may still be money well spent. At the same press conference where he exonerated Annan, Volcker promised that his final report will deal with the broader aspects of the Oil-for-Food scandal, i.e., the involvement of the Sanctions Committee, Security Council and governments of the member states.

The upside is that Volcker may confirm what the rightwing is loathe to admit -- that the Oil-for-Food program, which is now irredeemably tainted as “inefficient” or “corrupt” or “scandal-ridden,” was actually very successful in fulfilling its two major aims: feeding Iraqis while starving Saddam’s war machine. It is the reason why there were no WMDs in Iraq and why the United States asked it to continue its activities after the invasion.

Ian Williams writes on the United Nations for AlterNet. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, The Nation, and Salon.

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