maybe not in your news but CNN does.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/01/annan.coleman/index.html

U.S. senator wants Annan to resign as U.N. leader
Coleman looking into alleged fraud in oil-for-food program run by U.N.
Wednesday, December 1, 2004 Posted: 10:44 AM EST (1544 GMT)



Sen. Norm Coleman, left, is calling for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan
to resign.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. senator leading the investigation into
allegations of corruption and mismanagement in the Iraq oil-for-food
program is urging U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign.

The "massive scope of this debacle demands nothing less," wrote Sen. Norm
Coleman, R-Minnesota, in an opinion piece published Wednesday in The Wall
Street Journal.

"The decision to call for Mr. Annan's resignation does not come easily,"
Coleman wrote. "But I have arrived at this conclusion because the most
extensive fraud in the history of the U.N. occurred on his watch.

"The world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes,
kickbacks and under-the-table payments that occurred under the U.N.'s
collective nose while Annan is in charge."

Coleman is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,
which has been investigating the oil-for-food program for seven months.

Coleman said he was not accusing Kofi Annan of anything "other than
incompetence and mismanagement."

The program, administered by the United Nations, was designed to allow
Iraq, when it was under economic sanctions after the Persian Gulf War, to
sell oil and use the proceeds to buy food and medicine to mitigate the
sanctions' impact on the Iraqi people.

Coleman said the investigation cannot be completed with Annan at the helm
of the world body.

"The bottom line is, one man was in charge and if we're going to get to the
bottom of this, he's got to step back so that we can have trust and
credibility and transparency in sorting out what happened," he said
Wednesday in an interview on CNN's "American Morning."

Coleman's committee has charged that Saddam Hussein was able to siphon off
$6.7 billion in oil revenues from the program and made an additional $13.7
billion smuggling oil in contravention of international sanctions.

Annan has appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to conduct
an internal investigation into the allegations. But Coleman, while calling
Volcker a "good and honest man," said that the United Nations "simply
cannot root out its own corruption while Mr. Annan is in charge."

"If we're to get to the bottom of this, if there's to be any credibility,
the person that was at the helm during the course of this thing cannot be
the guy that Paul Volcker reports to, cannot be the guy that we go asking
for help and assistance in getting the people we need to talk to," Coleman
told CNN. "He needs to step back, step down for the credibility of the
organization itself."

Annan's son, Kojo, received money for consulting work done in Africa for
the Swiss firm Cotecna, which inspected goods entering Iraq under the oil-
for-food program. On Monday, the secretary-general said he was disappointed
to learn in news reports that his son remained on the Cotecna payroll until
earlier this year, despite earlier U.N. statements that he had stopped
receiving money from the firm back in 1998.

No formal charges of wrongdoing have been made against Kojo Annan by any of
at least six separate investigations under way into the oil-for-food
program. But his father conceded Monday that the latest news creates the
perception "of conflict of interests and wrongdoing" at the United Nations.

Kofi Annan also said he had no personal involvement in the granting of
contracts to companies that participated in the oil-for-food program.





On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 11:21:52 -0800, Craig Lalley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>How come this is not discussed in the news?  I am sure they are not biased?
>
>From the Wall Street Journal.
>
>Maybe it really was blood for oil/money... thou doest protest too loudly?
>
>-Craig
>
>
>
>Sen. Norm Coleman, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations which is
>looking into the oil-for-food scandal, explains just how serious this
scandal is in a Wall Street
>Journal op/ed...
>
>“While many questions concerning Oil-for-Food remain unanswered, one
conclusion has become
>abundantly clear: Kofi Annan should resign. The decision to call for his
resignation does not come
>
>easily, but I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive
fraud in the history of
>the U.N. occurred on his watch. In addition, and perhaps more importantly,
as long as Mr. Annan
>remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent
of the bribes, kickbacks
>and under-the-table payments that took place under the U.N.'s collective
nose.
>
>“Mr. Annan was at the helm of the U.N. for all but a few days of the Oil-
for-Food program, and he
>must, therefore, be held accountable for the U.N.'s utter failure to
detect or stop Saddam's
>abuses. The consequences of the U.N.'s ineptitude cannot be overstated:
Saddam was empowered to
>withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his
military. Needless to say,
>he made the Iraqi people suffer even more by importing substandard food
and medicine under the
>Oil-for-Food program and pawning it off as first-rate humanitarian aid.
>
>“Since it was never likely that the U.N. Security Council, some of whose
permanent members were
>awash in Saddam's favors, would ever call for Saddam's removal, the U.S.
and its coalition
>partners were forced to put troops in harm's way to oust him by force.
Today, money swindled from
>Oil-for-Food may be funding the insurgency against coalition troops in
Iraq and other terrorist
>activities against U.S. interests. Simply put, the troops would probably
not have been placed in
>such danger if the U.N. had done its job in administering sanctions and
Oil-for-Food.
>
>“This systemic failure of the U.N. and Oil-for-Food is exacerbated by
evidence that at least one
>senior U.N. official--Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan's hand-picked director of the
U.N.'s Oil-for-Food
>oversight agency--reportedly received bribes from Saddam. According to
documents from the Iraqi
>oil ministry that were obtained by us, Mr. Sevan received several
allotments of oil under
>Oil-for-Food, each of which was worth hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of dollars.
>
>“To make matters worse, the actions of Mr. Annan's own son have been
called into question.
>Specifically, the U.N. recently admitted that Kojo Annan received more
money than previously
>disclosed from a Swiss company named Cotecna, which was hired by the U.N.
to monitor Iraq's
>imports under Oil-for-Food. Recently, there are growing, albeit unproven,
allegations that Kofi
>Annan himself not only understands his son's role in this scandal--but
that he has been less than
>forthcoming in what he knew, and when he knew it.”
>
>Sen. Coleman notes that “the U.N. simply cannot root out its own
corruption while Mr. Annan is in
>charge” and comes to this conclusion:  “It's time for Kofi Annan to step
down. The massive scope
>of this debacle demands nothing less. If this widespread corruption had
occurred in any legitimate
>
>organization around the world, its CEO would have been ousted long ago, in
disgrace. Why is the
>U.N. different?”
>
>
>
>
>
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