Oil-for-food probes expose cultural gulfs

Inside Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, the scheme had a nickname: "Saddam Bribery System."

It was a simple plan, really, according to a former top Iraqi petroleum official. Saddam Hussein told them to sell oil to his supporters. The price was to be kept low to maximize their profits.

In return, Iraq received kickbacks from some recipients - and, perhaps more important, gratitude.

"This was done in order to enhance the power of Saddam Hussein," the Iraqi told US investigators last year.

Two years after Mr. Hussein's ouster, revelations about his alleged bribery system have developed into a full-force international financial scandal. The controversy involves both the nature of bribes and the zeal, or lack thereof, of the United Nations reaction.

The UN, overseer of the Hussein-era oil-for-food program, last year launched a probe of the affair. But key members of Congress remain unsatisfied with UN actions, and now both House and Senate committees are digging into roomfuls of documents on their own.

The result, says one expert: a clash of law-enforcement cultures. "This is the clash of an international organization composed of many other countries that do not have US standards of transparency, and of the US Congress, which is determined to make use of its investigative powers," says Robert Pfaltzgraff, security expert at Tufts University's Fletcher School.

As laid out at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, the story of manipulations of the oil-for-food program is one in which there are few heroes. According to a series of congressional reports, officials from France, Britain, and Russia all received oil allocations from Hussein.

"In particular, Iraq identified French and Russian officials in hopes of undermining economic sanctions by creating divisions within the United Nations Security Council," says a memo drafted by staff members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The House memo cites a 2002 letter on Iraqi Intelligence Service letterhead titled "Iraqi-French Relations," which lists a number of influential people that Iraqi agents might conceivably approach, from former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing to Jacques Delors, former head of the European Commission.

Charles Pasqua, a former French interior minister, did receive oil allocations of 11 million barrels, according to congressional investigators. A Senate report cites a 1999 handwritten note from the executive director of the State Oil Marketing Organization, which implies the personal involvement of Hussein. "The president leader ... has approved the allocation of 3 million barrels to the French personality [Charles Pasqua]," said the note.

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