GLOBE EDITORIAL
UN oil, Saddam's spoilsTHERE ARE crucial questions to be answered about the graft and kickbacks that were skimmed from the United Nations' Oil for Food program in Iraq from December 1996 to November 2003. Not the least of these questions concerns the culpability or collusion of UN officials. Wednesday's unanimous UN Security Council resolution authorizing an independent investigation of the program to be headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker represents a welcome UN acceptance of the need for transparency.
Secretary General Kofi Annan originally sought an in-house UN investigation of the mammouth corruption schemes associated with the Oil for Food program. Until this week Russia had been threatening to veto the resolution with the excuse that the council should not respond to media rumors. In fact, there are mountains of incriminating evidence -- files from the offices of Saddam Hussein's regime, commercial contracts, and records of Volcker was right to say: "A full, fair investigation, as conclusive as we can make it, is in the long-term interest of the UN." Too much is already known about fraud in the program to keep it a secret any longer. At this point, any UN attempt at a coverup would do even more harm than has already been done to an international body that remains indispensable for humanitarian missions, peacekeeping, election monitoring, and efforts to assure international peace and security. Volcker's panel should eventually apportion responsibility for what went so disastrously wrong in the Oil for Food program. This means disclosing to what extent UN officials might have been personally corrupt, receiving indirect payoffs from Saddam for looking the other way, and to what extent they were too lax and incompetent to notice that the Iraqi despot stole more than $10 billion from the program under their noses. Those funds were supposed to pay for food and medicines for an Iraqi populace suffering under UN sanctions. Skimmed funds went instead to pay for Saddam's palaces, the perks of his gangster elite, the purchase of weapons, and the fealty of his security services. If the UN is to help Iraqis organize elections and select an interim government until those elections can be held, UN officials should want the truth about any UN involvement in Saddam's enormous theft from Iraqis. Iraqis know that Saddam took kickbacks from the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of goods he bought with UN approval. Newspapers that have sprung up recently in Iraq have named prominent foreigners whom Saddam purportedly rewarded with oil contracts for defending his regime. Those named include French and Russian officials, shell companies on terrorist watch lists, and the senior UN official who headed the Oil for Food program.
Volcker's panel can cauterize the UN's self-inflicted wound if it shows Annan and his colleagues the folly of their allowing Saddam to choose the buyers of his oil and the sellers of the goods he bought. The other glaring flaw was the secrecy that Annan allowed Saddam to preserve. Volcker could set his own example of transparency if he makes the materials his panel discovers public, allowing reporters around the world to unravel the coils of international complicity with a mass murderer. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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