U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan can't escape blame so easily

The usual suspsect have been trying to float the idea that Kofi Annan was exonerated by the Volker investigation's interim report. Not so fast. If anything, the report shows Annan to be quite incompetent and creates new questions on his and his son, Kojo's involvement in the Oil-for-Food scandal.

In his article, 'In the wrong', Jack Kelly expands on this.

""We did not exonerate Kofi Annan," Swiss organized crime expert Mark Pieth, one of Volcker's three investigators, told The Associated Press."

Of course they did not. It was after all, an interim report.

"In an editorial headlined: "Report Spells the End of Kofi Annan," the Montreal Gazette noted that Annan's then executive assistant destroyed three years worth of files on Oil for Food the day after the Security Council passed a resolution authorizing Volcker's inquiry.

"Just connect the dots," the newspaper said. "What a damning picture it is. Its reputation already in tatters, the U.N. stands today weaker than it ever was. Only major governance reforms can save the world body now, and the first order of reform business needs to be finding a credible replacement for Annan.""

With the UN's failures in Rwanda and Sudan, along with the sex scandals, this is an organiztion that is crumbling from within.

"Oil-for-food is surely one of the largest financial scandals in the history of the world, but it is hardly the United Nations' only problem. There are the sex scandals involving U.N. peacekeepers in the Congo and elsewhere, and the United Nations' inability or unwillingness to put a halt to genocide in Darfur. The United Nations came late and brought little to the aid of victims of last December's tsunami.

"Up until four or five days ago ... the U.N. was nowhere to be seen -- except quite overwhelmingly in Jakarta's luxury hotels, a few UNocrats in Medan, and a tiny handful at the airport in Aceh writing up press releases claiming all the credit for the U.N. and bad-mouthing the hard working Aussies and Americans," wrote the Diplomad, a blogging foreign service officer involved in the relief effort in Indonesia, on Jan. 27, a month after the tsunami struck."

There were also many complaaints form those in the US military on how these UN "officials" whined and bellyached about the hardships they were enduring. There were also complaints on how these same officials messed up relief operations because of their travel needs. Never forget it was some of these same people who criticized the US economic response.

"Annan's term expires at the end of next year. Bill Clinton would love to replace him. But no citizen of a permanent member of the Security Council should get the job. It should go to a genuine democrat of unquestioned integrity and demonstrable guts, such as former Czech President Vaclav Havel, current Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar or Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer."

Any of these men that Kelly has suggested would be an excellent choice to attempt to bring the UN from the cesspool it has become, to the organization it was hoped to be when it was founded. - Sailor