Diplomat in the middle

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, is a pivotal player in President Bush's showdown with Iraq.

With Mr. Bush's Sept. 12 challenge to the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions on Iraq, or face irrelevance, the UN chief went into diplomatic overdrive.

Within days, Mr. Annan was touting a new deal in which Baghdad agreed to allow UN weapons inspectors to return "without conditions."

But two problems quickly emerged – and they underscore how crucial Annan's relationship with Saddam Hussein will be in the days ahead.

First, Iraq's leader seemingly agreed only to unconditional return of inspectors on Sept. 16, not to unconditional inspections. And second, Annan has cut deals with Mr. Hussein before, only to see him stonewall and humiliate the UN.

"The secretary-general won't apologize for trying to avoid conflict," says Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard. "That's his job."

Still, some observers wondered: Why does Annan continue to give a man with Hussein's track record the benefit of the doubt? How damaging is it to the UN, if not to Annan's personal credibility? And will he impede the American drive to oust Hussein?

"I know Kofi's in a difficult position, because a majority of UN members belong to the nations of the third world, and there have been lots of appeals to him to stop the Americans from moving down a certain path," says one Western UN diplomat. "I don't think he's unaware of what Iraq's trying to do, but what he did the other day eased the pressure on Iraq and didn't go down too well in Washington."

Indeed, by week's end, Iraq was already establishing a new condition: no more UN resolutions – nothing more beyond last week's agreement with Annan was needed.

The cover Annan seems to provide Iraq is of great concern to US observers. But that may be as much a trait of Annan as of the UN itself, critics say, as two tenets dominate the world body: No conflict is so intractable that it can't be resolved through negotiations, and national sovereignty must trump all.

The Iraq debate was put on hold at the UN Monday as the 15-member UN Security Council met in an emergency session. Early Tuesday, it passed a resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian cities. The US abstained, officials said, because the resolution failed to mention the two militant groups responsible for bombing attacks in Israel last week. The US has vetoed similar resolutions in the past. Israel's UN ambassador, Yehuda Lancry, said the US abstention reflects a US desire to preserve good international relations ahead of military action against Iraq.

Annan became the UN's seventh secretary-general in January 1997. With three decades of service to the UN, the Ghanaian native was the first secretary general to be promoted from the ranks of UN staff. He emerged on the international stage in 1990, helping negotiate the freedom of international workers from Baghdad after Iraq had invaded Kuwait.

Later, he was head of UN peacekeeping operations during the Rwanda Hutu genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis in 1994, and in 1995 when Serbs overran the UN "haven" of Srebrenica and massacred some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Two years ago, Annan offered a mea culpa for the UN's inaction.

But Annan has also won praise for crusading against poverty and HIV/AIDS and for pressing corporations to respect the environment, human rights, and employment laws.

Last year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize – over protests from Bosnian and Rwandan victims – jointly to the UN and Annan for working toward "a better organized and more peaceful world."

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