--- More UN Oil For

--- More UN Oil For Food Scandale (hat tip: Instapundit}

Most prominent among those accused in the scandal is Benon Sevan,
the Cyprus-born U.N. undersecretary general who ran the program for six
years. In an interview with ABCNEWS last year, Sevan denied any
wrongdoing.

Wait for it.

But documents have surfaced in Baghdad, in the files of the former
Iraqi Oil Ministry, allegedly linking Sevan to a pay-off scheme in
which some 270 prominent foreign officials received the right to trade
in Iraqi oil at cut-rate prices. "It's almost like having coupons of
bonds or shares. You can sell those coupons to other people who are
normal oil traders," said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British adviser to
the Iraq Governing Council. Investigators say the smoking gun is a
letter to former Iraqi oil minister Amer Mohammed Rasheed, obtained by
ABCNEWS and not yet in the hands of the United Nations. In the letter,
dated Aug, 10, 1998, an Iraqi oil executive mentions a request by a
Panama-based company, African Middle East Petroleum Co., to buy Iraqi
oil — along with a suggestion that Sevan had a role in the deal. "Mr.
Muwafaq Ayoub of the Iraqi mission in New York informed us by telephone
that the abovementioned company is the company that Mr. Sevan cited to
you during his last trip to Baghdad," the executive wrote in Arabic. A
handwritten note indicated that permission for the oil purchase was
granted by "the Vice President of the Republic" on Aug. 15, 1998. The
second page of the letter contains a table entitled "Quantity of Oil
Allocated and Given to Mr. Benon Sevan." The table lists a total of 7.3
million barrels of oil as the "quantity executed" — an amount that,
if true, would have generated an illegal profit of as much as $3.5
million. "Somebody who is running the Oil-for-Food program for the
United Nations should not be receiving any benefit of any kind from a
rogue dictator who was perpetuating terror in his country," said
Hankes-Drielsma.
Again, I would like for someone to give me one good reason why the UN
is the organization best qualified to take over in Iraq.
I had this professor in college, who, while a serious liberal, always
told us in our International Organizations class to not put all of our
eggs in the UN's basket. He said he'd never seen a more corrupt place,
and one of his many examples was that of consultants being paid $60K
for a day's work. I took him at his word on this one, even though this
was in the years directly after GWI and all anyone could say was that
the UN had worked to bring people together to take care of a problem.
That the UN, while it had its flaws and wouldn't allow the coalition to
go after Saddam, was still a good organization---on the whole. The idea
was sound but there was room for improvement in the practicalities.
This was pre-Rwanda, of course, so there was still hope that the place
could be cleaned up.
But I never thought I'd see corruption on this level. It's naive of me,
perhaps, but this is beyond the pale. Millions of dollars worth of a
dictator's oil flowing directly into the pockets of the person who was
supposed to make sure that dictator's people were getting fed? Beyond.
The. Pale. I'm assuming now that ABC's got the story, it will get some
legs. Hopefully. It's been rumbling around the blogosphere for months
now, but for the most part has gone unreported by big media. Is there
going to be a scandal? I hope so. And I hope it's going to be BIG. This
crap has got to stop. There are going to be some hard questions that
the US government and others are going to want answered, and none of
them bode well for the current incarnation of the United Nations. a. Is
there room for improvement? Say if a hard ass Secretary-General was
appointed and cleaned house, would it be better or is that a pipe
dream?
b. Should we just scrap it? One could make the argument that the UN has
turned into another League of Nations and we all know how succesful
that organization was. When Libya is elected chair of the Human Rights
committee---well, what exactly does that say about the UN? c. The
British historian Paul Johnson commented in his Forbes
column back in February that the UN should bug out of New York. (Forbes
wants to charge me for the article...if the husband--a
subscriber---comes up with it, I'll post it.) The gist of his argument
was that the UN needs to get out of New York and should be closer to
perhaps Africa or some of its other needier countries to help keep the
focus on what the organization was founded to do in the first place. He
said that the current location in New York was encouraging the worst
behavior in the diplomats because of its general cushiness. Is this an
option? Where would the UN go? Would the US and NYC object? (I don't
think the meter maids would mind, though.) But most of all, would it
change the diplomats' behavior? Would such a move force them to keep
their eye on the ball, or would it just be switching ballparks?