August 20, 2005

IF one could bring oneself to paying a compliment to the pack of neocons ruling the roost in Washington under George W. Bush, it is that they have been single-mindedly methodical in pursuit of their imperialist ambitions.

Neither the grand adventure in Iraq going horribly wrong, nor the stand-off in Afghanistan, nor even the terrible buffeting US policies have been taking among the American allies in Europe and Nato have deterred them from their course, or even dampened their ardour for American empire becoming a reality in their lifetime.

The UN has been a thorn in the neocons’ side for years. They simply despise it for being troublesome and an irritant in the implementation of their agenda of global hegemony. Because of this strong, and at times overpowering, allergy to the UN, President Bush and his neocons scorned the world body from day one of their blueprint for the invasion of Iraq. They abhorred any idea of UN queering their pitch or spoiling the party they thought they’d have when their GIs liberating Iraq from Saddam would be showered with rose petals on the streets of Baghdad.

The neocons ridiculed the notion that the UNSCOM, charged with cleansing Iraq of Saddam’s perceived weapons of mass destruction, was capable of delivering the goods they wanted of it. It doesn’t bother them that their own experts, after spending months and billions of dollars, couldn’t find any such weapons either. Just before the Iraqi invasion plans were put on the front burner in Washington, Hans Blix of Sweden, who headed UNSCOM’s successor, UNMOVIC, was as much a despised figure as Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General.

Blix was made a convenient whipping boy because he was not cooperative enough with Washington or ready to sign on the dotted lines presented to him. But the real lightning rod at the UN for the wrath incessantly poured from Washington has been none other than Kofi himself.

Kofi Annan, a UN careerist from the ‘60s vintage, was Washington’s choice to succeed Boutrous Ghali of Egypt who had fallen from Washington’s grace for being non-cooperative. Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, had openly lobbied against a second term for Ghali and, in the same breath, canvassed for Annan who was expected to play by the rules laid down for the secretary-general by the sole superpower.

Kofi didn’t cause too much concern initially. The Clinton administration didn’t carry the kind of chip on its shoulder that has become the trade mark of the Bush team from its day one in the White House. Kofi and the world body led by him were tolerated by the neocons with, at best, open disdain. They had come to office with a categorical map of a world ruled and run according to their rules of the game, and not those of the UN. The world body was an obstacle that the US could do well without.

One neocon famously observed that nobody would even notice if the upper floors of the UN headquarters building (where the secretary-general has his office) disappeared one morning. That UN-baiter is now the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, whom Bush has designated despite Senate’s refusal to endorse him.

Like his predecessor, Kofi too fell from grace when he demurred on toeing the Washington line that it alone should be the judge and arbiter, and also hangman, on Iraq. A team player through his long years in the UN bureaucracy, Kofi insisted on the primacy of UN’s multilateral creed, anathema to the neocons.

But Annan became a marked man for the neocons, in the absolute sense of the word, the day he labelled the American invasion and occupation of Iraq as ‘illegal’, though not necessarily in so many words.

The neocon philosophy is dangerously simplistic and naive when it comes to branding one as a friend or foe. It is the closest thing to the archaic justice system of the wild west, as practised in the 19th century US. Anyone, by this philosophy, is an enemy if he dares to cross your path and deserves to be put down and destroyed. Annan’s temerity to publicly challenge the Bush imperialistic doctrine was brazen and needed to be countered with full force. The neocons quickly marshalled their resources to make a horrible example of Kofi Annan.

The scandal surrounding the infamous ‘Oil for Food’ deal for Iraq didn’t take too long after that to hit the media headlines. The campaign originated with some exuberant members of Congress. Senator Coleman, a rookie senator from Minnesota, unfurled the standard of US response to Annan’s daring, calling for his scalp because he had allowed corruption to flourish on his watch. Coleman is a leading light among the emerging new echelons of the neocons.

The oil for food programme, begun in December, 1996, was plagued with controversy from the word ‘go’. The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussain had serious reservations about its success because it gave the regime no hand on the till. The sale proceeds of the Iraqi oil, sold on world market, were deposited in an escrow account with BanqueNational de Paris (BNP) but rigorously managed by the UN Sanctions Committee that literally worked as a hand maiden of the US Mission to the UN in New York.

The Iraqis didn’t get to see a penny of their oil proceeds; they were only allowed to import food and medicines from these proceeds. However, every item imported had to have prior approval of the sanctions committee where the US and British representatives squeezed the Iraqis out, even, of lead pencils for the Iraqi school children because their lead could, theoretically, be used by the Iraqi army for banned activities.

Despite such hawkish vigilantes breathing down the UN’s neck, the US claims that the oil-for-food programme was misused by Saddam, in collusion with UN personnel. Iraq sold $65 billion worth of oil during the currency of the programme, until the US invasion of March, 2003, and Washington alleges that Saddam sold an additional $ 1.7 billion that he pocketed himself.

An important part of the neocon agenda on Iraq is to shout from their rooftops of Saddam’s shenanigans because, they argue with zest, that the money made on the lam is still being used to feed the fires of insurgency in Iraq against American occupation.

The thrust of the neocon campaign is that Saddam was allowed by corrupt UN personnel to short-circuit the system and feather his own nest. Had the UN been more vigilant, Saddam wouldn’t have succeeded in his scam and, consequently, there would be no money today for the insurgents to carry on.

Alarmed by the strident neocon onslaught against him, Annan set up an independent inquiry into the allegations headed by a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, highly respected as a fair and impartial figure. The Volcker Committee released on August 8 its third report on the scandal which accuses two senior UN officials of corruption and bribery.

One of these is Benon Sevan of Cyprus, an old colleague of Annan, who headed the Iraq Programme and was second-in-command to Annan in that context. Sevan had a sterling reputation in UN circles as a fair and competent official who also enjoyed Annan’s trust until tainted by this scandal. This scribe knew him too because of his frequent visits to Baghdad to oversee the operation of oil-for-food deal. Sevan may or may not be corrupt, financially, but he had a weakness that didn’t sit well with his detractors: he was candid in his views of countries and people and didn’t mince his words.

The second Volcker report, made public last March, had clearly stated that it found no evidence to link Annan with the scandal. The latest report doesn’t name him either, although it says it will come up with a definitive opinion about him in the next report, due in September.

However, the neocons’ “wild-west” sense of judgment has already passed a guilty verdict against Annan. No wonder, they have been crying for his head for some time. The latest insinuation against him is the appearance of an e-mail allegedly written by some official of Cotecna, the Swiss company that had replaced Lloyds of Britain as inspectors of the goods imported by Iraq under the programme. Kofi Annan’s son, Kojo Annan, worked for Cotecna’s African operation. Kofi’s American detractors have long insinuated that Cotecna was awarded the Iraqi contract because of Kojo’s influence over his father.

It doesn’t matter to the neocon crusaders against Kofi Annan whether they would succeed in putting the noose around his neck in the end or not. They feel confident that he has been put sufficiently on the defensive and would be silenced. That’s what they have been aiming at from the beginning of the scandal.

The neocon strategy, vis-a-vis the UN, is transparent. Cut it down to size so it stops spoiling their game. The UN is, at best, a nuisance to them that should only be tolerated so long as it is willing to be confined to a box. Bush couldn’t show a greater disrespect to the UN, and all that it stands for, than naming an inveterate enemy of the UN like John Bolton as his ambassador to it. This has been described by the New York Times as dispatching “damaged” goods to the world body. A European statesman has called him a bull in the china shop. To Bush, however, it is his way of thumbing his nose at Kofi Annan.

The writer is a former ambassador to Iraq.

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