inside the glass house

Annan: Besieged by son and sins
NEW YORK - When the UN Chief of Staff was peppered with questions about the role played by the Secretary-General's 31-year-old son Kojo Annan in influencing the outcome of a UN contract won by a Swiss company he worked for, Mark Malloch Brown recounted what he told Kofi Annan jokingly: "I am glad my son is only eight years old."

An exhaustive report released last week by a three-member UN appointed independent committee not only faulted Kojo Annan of intentionally deceiving his father but also for continuing a financial relationship with Cotecna Inspection Services, the Swiss company he worked for, which continued to pay him as much as $450,000 as consulting fees, a sizeable part of it even after he left the company.

After the report was released, the Secretary-General claimed that he was personally exonerated of any wrong doing in the now-defunct, scandal-plagued $67 billion oil-for-food programme in Iraq, but agreed with the committee's finding about a lapse in judgement on his part for not conducting a formal investigation after he became aware that the company his son worked for had won a UN contract.

But the far bigger story -- of mismanagement, corruption, nepotism and sexual harassment in the UN system -- is refusing to die. As new scandals continue to unfold, the Secretary-General is clearly wounded. But still, he is trying to put a brave face against overwhelming odds.

Despite his remark, "Hell, no", he won't resign (until his second five-year term is over in December 2006), the speculation in corridors of the UN is not whether Annan will step down, but when?

Perhaps no Secretary-General in the 60-year history of the world body has been under siege as Annan is now. The rash of accusations is not against him but primarily against an institution in deep trouble.

But where really does the buck stop? Is a beleaguered Secretary-General politically capable of steering his ambitious plans to radically restructure the ailing organisation? How many are willing to take him seriously when his management style is under fire?

The Secretary-General's former chief of staff Iqbal Riza is accused of shredding documents going back to 1997. But Riza says he did so because he was running out of space in his office room.

Although the gesture was a routine exercise in an organisation which is a veritable paper factory -- and despite the fact that Riza's office did not oversee the oil-for-food programme -- the very act of shredding files at a time when the UN was under close scrutiny has triggered several malevolent conspiracy theories.

At least two of Annan's under-secretaries-general have also been accused of acting improperly -- one for misusing oil-for-food revenues by creating a new post for his countryman from Singapore, and the other for dismissing in less than 24 hours an investigation that warranted a more in-depth probe.

Last month another under-secretary-general, a former Dutch prime minister, was forced to resign following charges of sexual harassment. And last week an internal investigation found a string of management abuses, including public humiliation of staff, favouritism and sexual harassment, at the UN's Electoral Assistance Division which supervised the recent elections in Iraq.

All these scandals have followed widespread charges of rape, child molestation, and sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and also in Haiti. How does a Secretary-General survive in such a climate? The UN press corps has been particularly harsh refusing to take no for an answer.

Last week, one of the reporters even accused Annan of letting his longtime friends and colleagues take the blame for all wrong doing and even using them as scapegoats to save his own skin.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard, who faces the daily torment of intense questioning by the media, told reporters last week: "Your editorials, your cartoon drawings with the Secretary-General with mounds of money on his desk, that he had improperly interfered in the awarding of contracts, and that he had benefited financially from that -- that's what was going around the world, smearing the Secretary-General's reputation."

Annan, who addressed a packed news conference immediately after the report was released, refused to take more than three questions -- unusual by UN standards, given the nature of the crucial issues involved.

But Annan's chief of staff Malloch Brown, who briefed reporters later, justified Annan's terseness by pointing out that the Secretary-General had undergone several hours of cross-examination by the committee over the last few months. He will not be subjected to a further trial by UN correspondents, Malloch Brown added.

Still the neo-conservative groups in the US, along with right wing newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times, are still demanding Annan's head on a platter.

The Bush administration, which was critical of Annan for his opposition to the US-led war on Iraq, is standing by Annan. At least so far. As one of the reporters told the UN news briefing: "There's talk in some of the more conspiracy-minded quarters that what certain powerful members of the United Nations (read: United States) would like is to have a weakened Secretary-General who doesn't resign, is still in place, but cut off at the knees." Does Annan really fit that mould?

The average American, woefully ignorant of how the UN works, has always been quick to condemn the whole organisation for the sins of a few. At a radio call-in programme last week, one of the listeners told the deejay that the US should get rid of the UN from New York because the Secretariat building is full of "rapists, sexual abusers and child molesters." Is Jayantha Dhanapala, Sri Lanka's candidate for the next Secretary-General, ready to inherit the "deviant" organisation?

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