Oil-for-food report urges reforms at UN

A report probing the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq has concluded that either the UN must address the management flaws that allowed shortcomings to fester, or the world's premier international organization could lose what legitimacy it has in addressing global security challenges.

The findings, which were issued Wednesday, follow more than a year's investigation into the ambitious UN effort to aid the Iraqi people and stifle the regime of Saddam Hussein. The report sets out a list of reforms - such as creating a position of chief operating officer and a strong new independent auditing board - to avoid the kind of corruption and big-bureaucracy inefficiencies that marked the $64 billion program.

What remains in the balance now is whether the oil-for-food spotlight will shine the way to necessary changes or make an already difficult road impossible. In addition, the report casts a shadow over UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as he has sought a broad vision of UN reform, and it raises doubts over whether he will be able to hold on through his term, which ends in December 2006.

"Reform is needed, and is needed now," said Paul Volcker, chairman of the UN-named Independent Inquiry Committee, at a press conference Wednesday. "It's not just one program.... One has to look at the whole organization."

Wednesday's presentation is the fourth and most comprehensive by the committee headed by Mr. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman. Another report, due out in a month, is expected to list specific companies, including American ones, that participated in the corruption by providing kickbacks to Iraqi and program officials.

The current report comes just as the 191 member countries of the UN are debating a set of reforms to be taken up at an unprecedented international summit at the UN next week. While that might seem like fortuitous timing, experts say that it may only further muddy an already turbulent situation.

"All this is going to do is underscore the folly of those UN officials, starting with Kofi Annan, who want to change the topic from the UN's performance and reform to the objective of solving global poverty," says Joshua Muravchek, an expert in the UN at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "That strategy is elegant and intelligent, because who's in favor of poverty? But I don't think it's going to wash."

Indeed, the report, which contains five parts and totals more than 1,000 pages, lays partial blame on Secretary-General Annan for poor management of the program. Perhaps his shortcoming - and one reflective of the UN's overall problems - is that he didn't understand the depth of need for management reform, UN analysts say.

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