Some have criticized this blog focusing on minor problems with the Volcker Committee’s second interim report on Oil-for-Food for taking an excessive interest in what may be no more than another case of a misbegotten son making trouble for a famous father. But the tale of Kojo and Kofi demonstrates something more important than “Annan family values.” It is a window onto the culture of the United Nations itself, a culture that allows its own commission on human rights to be populated with dictatorships. With many now calling for reform of the international organization, a full airing of this culture would appear mandatory.
Notably missing from today’s London Times story on the interim report is any mention of the September/October 2002 contacts between Kojo’s former business partner Pierre Mouselli and the Iraqis. According to Mouselli, Saddam’s people (then on the brink of being invaded) suddenly invited the businessman to lunch at their embassy in Abuja, Nigeria. They told him they were extremely interested in locating Kojo Annan for (unspecified) reasons. They said Kojo owed them for (unspecified) favors previously done him and they needed then to speak with Secretary General’s son as soon as possible. They offered Mouselli a visa to Iraq to discuss this with them further.
If anything in Mouselli’s testimony is incendiary material, this is it. Its implications point in many directions. But I have no idea if this testimony was followed up by the committee or by the London Times. It should have been because there is evidence, including the October 24 visa shown here,
that Mouselli, despite whatever “instabilities” he may have had, is not just making things up. The offer from the Iraqi ambassador in Abuja came just days before Mousellli moved back from Nigeria to France. Though never used, this visa was picked up there by Mouselli from Nawaf Jassim, the “Conseiller, Iraqi Section” in Paris. Mouselli has given Jassim’s business card to the committee. Was Mr. Jassim contacted by the committee for corroboration or other insights? I don’t know, but given their lax investigation I would bet against it.
I would doubt too that Robert Winnett, the London Times reporter, did much investigation on his own. He did not have time. But I wonder why this important incident was left out of his report. Could it be he was under pressure from lawyers working for one or both of the Annans? Perhaps his newspaper was afraid of litigation in the UK where libel laws are so much more stringent than in the US. I don’t know that either, though I wouldn’t be surprised.
But I do know this. Mouselli had an “identity confidentiality agreement” with the Volcker Committee while it conducted its investigation. One the eve of release of the report (March 25), the Committee asked that he waive it. After being assured that they regarded his testimony as “reliable and credible” and would report it as such, Mouselli agreed to the waiver. Then the Committee slimed him, using ex-Baathist officials to do their dirty work. How shameful.
But then this shame should give us an idea how seriously to take their investigation (if at all) as it goes forward into the operational phases of Oil-for-Food with its ramifications for even more important matters like Security Council votes. The “old pro” Paul Volcker should be paying attention because his reputation is involved. We are in a new Internet era, as Dick Thornburgh learned so belatedly. People are watching these investigations from all over the world. Many of them have illuminating stories to tell. Some of them even know the truth.
UPDATE: While Mouselli was being interviewed by the committee in Paris, he volunteered to phone the Iraqi ambassador (whose name has been withheld from the report for “security reasons”) he had lunch with to discuss Koho and have the committee listen in on his conversation. They did not follow through.
ìBut the tale of Kojo and Kofi demonstrates something more important than “Annan family values.” It is a window onto the culture of the United Nations itselfî
We have learned that the culture of the United Nations allows for vast sums of money to be exchanged with extremely little accountability. Abuse of the system is inevitable. Roger L. Simon is right to highlight the need for increased economic transparency. Outside of a Saddam Hussein style dictatorship, is there any other organization in the world so flippant regarding money matters? I personally cannot think of one that even comes close.
One could, for the sake, of the argument concede that Kofi Annan is an innocent man. But so what? Any leader that naÔve and out of the loop should be replaced.
ìI would doubt too that Robert Winnett, the London Times reporter, did much investigation on his own. He did not have time. But I wonder why this important incident was left out of his report. Could it be he was under pressure from lawyers working for one or both of the Annans? Perhaps his newspaper was afraid of litigation in the UK where libel laws are so much more stringent than in the US. I don’t know that either, though I wouldn’t be surprised.î
Yup, thatís probably it. A number of people cynically observed that the late Robert Maxwellís economic shenanigans some fifteen-twenty years ago would have been front-page news in the United States. Unfortunately, the British papers were terrified of being hauled into court. A minor well-intentioned error in a news article is sufficient grounds for a lawsuit. Such a thing is impossible in our country.
David Thomson ó So far. But the UK courts are trying to claim jurisdiction for libel and slander suits filed against American writers in American publications.
As for the rest of, I’ll repeat my question from any earlier thread; has there every been a public accusation of UN wrongdoing that DID prove to be groundless…?
I think Volker will do just what he has to and no more to end scrutiny on this.
There are a lot of important people that can not imagine life without the UN and I do not doubt that Kofi has some information of his own he could use if he had to.
These guys can play all the games they want but if they do not get to the bottom of this and restore American confidence in the UN it is only a matter of time before their influence is eroded and the institution will just become less and less important.
The UN should die. It is one of the last liberal fictions in the international sphere.
EU next down the tubes.
The chief engine of multilaterialism today is the UN. Do you suppose the Democrats will continue to keep urging us to swallow that tainted meat?
Even the evidence that hasn’t been shredded or suppressed is far more than sufficient to justify, nay, necessitate US withdrawal from the UN. I see little, if any, downside to withdrawal; the French, the lefties, etc., are going to accuse us of unilateral action in any event. At this point, I think that acting without UN approval or even in defiance of a UN resolution is a laudable thing. This is reminiscent of Huey Long’s Louisiana, but on a much grander scale.
David Thomson ó The EU is exactly the same way, blowing off reports of corruption and widespread irregularities. And they do it for exactly the same reason: There is no one to whom they are accountable. To them, transparency is whatever they say it is.
Indeed, the EU has gone the UN one better. The edicts and diktats of its unelected bureaucrats are deemed to supersede national law; the individual countries are expected to change their own laws and traditional practices with no chance of appeal. See Bad Day at Dubh Rock .
And this is the progressive future.
Terrye,
The Volcker report will establish the necessity for a thorough Congressional review of the US/UN relationship. It would be advantageous for that review to begin in late fall this year and continue through June ’06. Who knows, there may be enough filthy linen hanging on the line by June ’06 to bury the tranzis for a generation.
What won’t be left is any semblance of moral legitimacy for the tranzi homeboys at the UN. There is no rush at all in bringing this before Congress too soon. Better to let it rot and fester a bit more. Don Kofi needs to stay where he is and the DNC/NYT/WaPo clowns need to keep up their three monkey impersonation.
On Mouselli
A man is driving by a mental hospital when a tire goes flat. He stops and soon has the tire replaced. But, when he goes to put the nuts back on he somehow manages to step on the hubcap and sends the nuts flying into the lawn bordering the sidewalk.
As he’s cussing up a storm one of the patients says, “Take a nut off the other three tires and use them to hold the fourth on. It should hold long enough for you to get to a garage and replace the missing nuts.”
The driver looks at the patient and asks, “What are you doing in there?”
The patient replies, “I might be insane, but it don’t mean I’m stupid.”
Silicon Valley Jim,
The only downside I see to leaving the UN is our loss of the veto. I can easily envision the French cheering at the prospect of American withdrawal, and then proceeding immediately to the passing of all sorts of resolutions inimical to our interests. Such projects would be backed by the “court of world opinion” and we would become pariahs.
On the other hand, meaningful change at the UN is not in the air because the structure is inherently flawed. It is a government which pretends it is not and moreover a government whose basic structures completely fail the fundamental tests of accountability and balance. It was in fact, as Yama-arishi has stated so admirably, set up to solve the unsolvable. Such an organization, barring perhaps the first blush of idealism, must needs be extremely corrupt. There is no other way it could work itself out. Replacing Don Kofi with yet another corrupt minion of the dictators will fix precisely nothing. No particular individual is the cause of the problem, merely a symptom. The organization itself, together with the chimerical hopes which it fosters by its very existence, are the real problems.
Its not just Kojo scamming some money because his father bought him a job by bringing Cotecna in as the inspection company. Its not because Kofi was paying the attorney fee’s for his old buddy Benan Sevan, the head of the “Oil for Food”scam. Its not because of the 150 rapes by the blue helmeted troops in the Congo and the pedophilia as practiced by a French UN Official who raped 100′s of little girls of 10 to 12 years of age . Its not because Kofi was there in Rwanda and watched the Tutsis get the chop, all 900,000 of them or even when Saddam wiped out the Marsh Arabs in the second genocide on Kofi’s watch. Darfur is just a replay of things he has been involved in before, he’s going to procrastinate until they are all raped and murdered and shoveled into a hole. It irritates me that this man gets a ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ like the murderer Arafat while people get wiped out on his watch. When a man just stands there because he is inept while murder and other crimes are occurring doesn’t make him innocent. Kofi has been complicit by ommission in the thefts of billions and the murder of millions because he is where the buck stops and our country will be complicit also if we don’t get him out of the position he is in. In another blog http://acepilots.com/unscam/ Kofi’s complicity in the these things are carefully pointed out. Its like he’s saying, “I was just following orders;” how many people have been involved in 2 going on 3 genocide’s? If this man is capable of what he has been involved in, what will he do for an encore
ìKofi has been complicit by ommission in the thefts of billions and the murder of millions because he is where the buck stops and our country will be complicit also if we don’t get him out of the position he is in.î
Oh no, the United States does not deserve this sort of guilt trip. The Bush administration should just stand back and let the cards fall where they may. Why allow others the opportunity to unjustly make us seem like bullies when itís not necessary? It is preferable that another country initiates the possible ouster of Kofi Annan. I suspect the Bush administration has already decided to subtly work around the United Nations. The polls also indicate that the American public will go along with such a decision.
Talk about a fortunate coincidence. I just visited Instapundit after my last post a few minutes ago, and he is highlighting this story:
ìIn an editorial headlined: “Report Spells the End of Kofi Annan,” the Montreal Gazette noted that Annan’s then executive assistant destroyed three years worth of files on Oil for Food the day after the Security Council passed a resolution authorizing Volcker’s inquiry.î
http://instapundit.com/archives/022199.php
The United States doesnít have to do the dirty work. It appears that the Canadians may want to kick Kofi Annan out of office. Shouldnít we let them take the flack? Isnít it time that Canada does something?
The liberal Canadian government has its own set of scandals to worry about.
Considering the UN, I don’t see the US leaving it. Too much of a propoganda disaster. In light of the UN’s pretentions of being a World Government stuffed full of moral authority, I think the best course is to keep it hamstrung. Oh, and cut back the funding for it until it has some basic accounting procedures in place.
Bush is too savvy to have the UN leave. Why endure the harangues of the MSM and the idiotic talk shows. He’ll pay lip service to the UN as an institution, but effectively and operationally ignore it. Bolton, a gadfly, is a force for reasoned criticism and a challenge to the prevailing order of business as usual. I can not see him succumbing to its culture.
A Democratic administration would on the other hand empower it [listen to the mouthings of Richard Holbrooke,Albright and the now disgraced Berger] and aid and abet its corrupt ineffective ways.
There is a real opportunity here for the GOP. Remember when the UN was a revered institution, the world could not without. Not any more. Red America senses this withering away of the UN as an irreplacable institution, and, Red America will hopefully side with the GOP critique of the UN in the future. It is never too early to think 2008 and beyond. This is an important dividing lines between the parties. And the GOP should use this division as a basis for its governance into the 21st century.
The Democrats have recently and repeatedly fallened behind history and they appear to be positioned right there once again; against history’s tectonic shifts.
They said Kojo owed them for (unspecified) favors previously done him and they needed then to speak with Secretary General’s son as soon as possible.
That looks really bad. It implies an explanation for a great many things.
The UN needs to be finished/dead (with a stake through it’s heart) before the end of the Bush administration. That would insure, that even a change of US administration wouldn’t save it.
Otherwise like a kind of undead, the UN might come back to life. You never know what kind of idiots we might elect, so we need to provide for that worst case scenario.
Reforming the UN is akin to the expectation that the discovery of an un-released Beatles song will bring back the Beatles (complete with a world tour). It ain’t gonna happen.
Time moves on. The values/expectations invested in the United Nations at it’s conception are better invested in another goodwill instrument. It will take some time for the corrupt to abandon the UN and move to positions of influence in the new organization. In the meantime, we will have a few years of grace and blessing to do good things.
Going back to the Bull-Steer-Table Fare analogy, Kofi et al have cut certain items out of the UN. You cannot graft this stuff back on and expect it to work. It needs to be tested before it will ever be trusted again. Testing simply results in a mess on your hands. Table Fare left out eventually spoils.
Why didn’t anyone revive the League of Nations?
“Such projects would be backed by the “court of world opinion” and we would become pariahs.”
What? I thought we were already pariahs…
Canucklehead,
The retention of the true diplomatic function of the UN (or World Liars Club) is probably inevitable for the forseeable future. That would be of little concern to me, given my inifinitesimally small expectations regarding its performance. Of much greater concern (to me, at any rate) are the accreted programs that dispense largesse to the so-called NGO’s which, IMO, are simply a continuation of the ‘March Through the Institutions’. The interests of the US would be more ably advanced if funds devoted to those programs were administered by US rather than UN agency.
It would be preferable for the US to reduce its funding to specific UN programs while increasing funding to USAID or other US agencies at the same time. At least if the US were performing the tasks, the bureaucrats would be subject to GAO oversight with the appurtenant penalties for transgressions.
Leaving the Liars Club to its own devices while applying a checkbook tourniquet provides the potential for a decent reward for risk ratio. It also allows for the continued pursuit of US interests from within the Club.
Why didn’t anyone revive the League of Nations?
At a meeting of the Assembly in 1946, the League dissolved itself and its services, mandates, and property were transferred to the UN.
Oh, no! We’ll be pariahs in the eyes of Sudan and Robert Mugabe!