One would think that the cheerleaders for waging war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, on the thoroughly discredited grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, would have retreated into a period of quiet introspection. In fact, it is as difficult to find any trace of embarrassment, humility or repentance as it has been to find a trace of the supposedly ubiquitous and deadly WMD in Iraq. Instead many of the columnists and newspapers that clearly believe that attack is the best form of defense have gone on the offensive against the United Nations and Secretary General Kofi Annan.

And when Annan dared to suggest that the war had been illegal, and cautioned against a major military offensive in Fallujah because of the heightened risk of civilian casualties, the Wall Street Journal in an editorial described the secretary general's letter as "a hostile act" (Nov. 8).

The fiercest attack on the U.N. has concentrated on the oil-for-food scandal. Thus William Safire, writing in his New York Times column on Nov. 15, accused Annan of "stonewalling" and "obstruction of justice."

Safire wrote of "the secretary general's manipulative abuse of Paul Volcker," who cannot see how his integrity "is being shredded by a web of sticky-fingered officials and see-no-evil bureaucrats desperate to protect the man on top who hired (Volcker) to substitute for, and thereby to abort, a prompt and truly independent investigation."

So just what is this oil-for-food scandal? In fact, two separate scandals have been rolled into one: smuggling and bill padding.

The responsibility for preventing oil smuggling by Iraq lay with a maritime task force that included U.S. Navy ships; the U.N. as such had no role in this. The General Accounting Office of the U.S. Congress concluded that the maritime task force interdicted only 25 percent of the oil flow. The Iraqis were also driving trucks to Turkey, Syria and Jordan. The United States and Britain, not the U.N., had planes in the air to keep watch.

If some reports are to be believed, the Hussein regime had nothing to do with all this; it was all the fault of U.N. This is why Annan has criticized reports as "outrageous and exaggerated" and wondered why the whole scandal is being dumped solely on the U.N.

Then there is the matter of inflating the dollar figures in order to blacken the U.N.'s image as much as possible. The total of all "illicit" revenue from 1991 to 2003 may be $10 billion to $11 billion (subsequently revised upward to over $21 billion). Of this, less than $2 billion was in the form of surcharges on oil sales and kickbacks on humanitarian imports.

The "scam" consisted of underpricing Iraqi oil and overpricing goods purchased in return. Middlemen colluding in the twin scheme were bribed and the regime kept most of the price differentials in both sets of transactions. But the U.N. as an institution got less in its accounts than was its due.

U.N. overseers in the Office of the Iraq Program raised concerns about price discrepancies and oil sales surcharges to the sanctions committee comprising all 15 members of the Security Council.

The sanctions committee (not U.N. bureaucrats) decided whether to approve contracts or not. In the 18 months before the Iraq War, U.N. officials presented the sanctions committee with 70 contracts that were potentially overpriced. Not a single one of these was put on hold, not one.

The United States and Britain acted on concerns raised by the U.N. officials and put on hold thousands of contracts. These related mainly to concerns about dual-use technologies, not price padding, bribes and kickbacks. Not a single one of the 36,000 contracts was ever canceled. Why not?

The sanctions committee reflected the competing priorities of the Security Council, especially the U.S. and Britain. Their top concerns were to disarm Hussein, starve him of resources to rearm in future and minimize the collateral harm to his people caused by his policies.

Most likely, the U.S. and Britain chose to overlook pricing irregularities in the oil-for-food program in order to keep the sanctions regime going and stop Hussein from acquiring dangerous weapons. These disarmament goals were achieved, as we can now assert without qualification.

The oil-for-food program aimed to relieve the misery inflicted on his own people by Hussein. This humanitarian goal, too, was achieved. Over the life of the program from 1996 to 2003, a basic food ration was provided for the 27 million Iraqis, the average daily intake of calories jumped by 83 percent, child malnutrition was halved (it has almost doubled again since the Iraq War last year) and the mortality rate of children under age 5 plummeted.

Then when the scandal broke, Annan acted with alacrity. He sought full and immediate action by the Security Council and appointed people of impeccable integrity to conduct a thorough investigation. The committee is chaired by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Volcker. Annan has committed himself to full cooperation with the panel in providing all necessary documents and records, requiring U.N. officials to cooperate with it and making its report public.

Annan has demonstrated his transparency and integrity in previous difficult inquiries on tragedies in Srebrenica and Rwanda, which involved his own responsibilities as undersecretary general for peacekeeping. Few national governments respond as quickly with the promise of being just as thorough and transparent, when corruption scandals erupt.

Understandably, some U.S. congressmen are unhappy that U.N. officials cannot be subpoenaed by the Volcker committee. But the reason for this is that the U.N. does not have subpoena power that it can pass on to the committee.

Yet Annan has ordered all U.N. staff to cooperate with the inquiry, on pain of dismissal. If the committee finds evidence of wrongdoing by U.N. staff, suspects can be pursued in national courts with the right to subpoena.

Annan has said publicly that U.N. officials will not be permitted to hide behind claims of diplomatic immunity. In today's topsy-turvy world, this is described as stonewalling and obstruction of justice.

But of course a lynch mob does not want free and fair trials and is not prepared to wait for a verdict in court. Guilt is prejudged, and sentence should be swift and severe.

Consistent with this, the names of overseas individuals and companies allegedly implicated in the scandal have been published, but not of Americans -- for fear of action in U.S. courts.

Ramesh Thakur is senior vice rector of United Nations University in Tokyo. These are his personal views.

The Japan Times: Dec. 4, 2004
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