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POLITICS: U.N.’s Credibility At Breaking Point, Say Experts

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 29 2004 (IPS) - The United Nations’ continued engagement in Iraq – largely under U.S. pressure – is not only testing the credibility of the world body but also taking a toll on its Secretariat staff in New York.

An investigation into security lapses in the deaths of 22 international employees in the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad last August triggered the resignation Monday of the second highest ranking official in the Secretariat, the firing of the U.N. security coordinator, and the forced resignation of the humanitarian coordinator for Iraq.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has called the past year a particularly difficult one for both the organisation and for him personally, declined to accept the resignation of his second-in-command, Louise Frechette, taking into account, he said, the collective nature of the security failures in Iraq.

Frechette was chairwoman of the U.N. Steering Group on Iraq.

The U.N. Staff Union said Monday that Annan’s action falls far short of expectations. ” We would like to see everyone of those responsible for security lapses forced to resign from their jobs,” Guy Candusso, the body’s vice president, told IPS.

”We have 22 people dead. We have had charges of ‘gross negligence’ and ‘massive security failures’. And we have staffers responsible for this debacle retire with their pensions intact? Does the punishment fit the crime?” he asked.

The investigation on security lapses was conducted by a four-member panel, which submitted its report to Annan in early March. After reviewing its conclusions, he decided Monday to act.

Forced out of their positions were the security and humanitarian coordinators in Iraq, Tun Myat and Ramon Lopes de Souza.

The crisis over the security failures in the occupied nation comes on top of a growing scandal over the systematic abuse of the U.N.’s multi-billion-dollar oil-for-food programme there.

The Secretariat has been accused of turning a blind eye to possible kickbacks whilst the former Saddam Hussein government allegedly pocketed over 10 billion dollars in smuggled oil revenues and illicit proceeds – all under U.N. supervision.

Various media have also charged that one of the Swiss companies that benefited from the oil-for-food programme had employed Annan’s son.

”Yes, he had worked for the company,” the U.N. chief told reporters last week. ”But I had nothing to do with the contracts committee (responsible for doling out contracts under the oil-for-food programme)”.

For the United Nations, the news from Baghdad seems to go from bad to worse. As the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) prepares to bail out of Baghdad on Jun. 30, Washington is trying to shift its responsibility by virtually handing over a violently destabilised Iraq to the world body.

Last month, a unnamed U.S. official in Washington was quoted by the ‘New York Times’ as saying: ”We are trying to put this issue in Kofi Annan’s lap and let him run with it.”

But since the United Nations is still perceived as a political servant to the United States by many Iraqis, Annan is having a hard time convincing locals that he is no stalking-horse for the administration of President George W. Bush.

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the powerful Shiite cleric who remains a stumbling block to Bush administration’s plans for a future pro-U.S. Iraq, is unhappy that the United Nations sided with Washington when Annan declared that nation-wide elections are not feasible by Jun. 30.

Last week al-Sistani wrote to U.N. officials, urging them to not endorse a U.S.-inspired temporary constitution imposed on the Iraqis.

The Ayatollah has also warned that he will not cooperate with a U.N. mission currently in Baghdad to help Iraqis prepare for the upcoming elections, possibly as early as next year. An expected ‘fatwa’ or religious edict from him might throw U.N. plans into tailspin.

Asked if the United Nations has a credibility problem in Iraq, Annan told reporters: ”I don’t think it is so much a credibility problem for the United Nations as internal politics in Iraq.”

But U.S. academics and Middle East experts beg to differ. ”It seems that the United Nations under Kofi Annan never misses an opportunity to lose yet more credibility in the eyes of the world,” says Professor As’ad AbuKhalil of the department of politics at California State University.

”The United Nations yet again has gone to Iraq, sending a special envoy, not for the sake of the Iraqi people, but to try to help the United States out of a big mess,” AbuKhalil told IPS.

”An organisation that is based on the principle of self-determination for every country in the world, has supported the denial of self-determination for the Iraqi people, and bestowed a measure of legitimacy on the American occupation."

"It is time for those who care about the reputation of the United Nations to call for the resignation of the secretary-general”, added AbuKhalil, author of ‘Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New War on Terrorism’.

John Quigley, professor of international law at Ohio State University, said that many people worldwide are concerned that the United Nations, through no fault of its own, is not following its mandate.

”The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) went around the United Nations to bomb Serbia in 1999. The United States, Britain and Australia went around the United Nations to invade Iraq in 2003,” Quigley told IPS.

”And more recently,” he said, ”the United States deposed a president in Haiti, and the United Nations did nothing to stop it.”

At the same time, he said, Israel engages in ever-greater lethal provocations in Gaza and the West Bank, and the United Nations merely issues verbal condemnations, aware that the United States will block any stronger measures against Israel.

”Under U.S. pressure, the United Nations runs the risk of coming to be viewed as a tool of the United States. So long as the United Nations resists that pressure, it will be able to maintain credibility,” Quigley added.

According to James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International, while the United Nations has been accused of many failures in recent years, from Iraq to Rwanda – all potentially serious in undermining the credibility of the organisation – nothing could be more devastating than the U.N.’s failure to address the most basic issues of all: the brazen violation of its charter by members of the Security Council.

”When the United States and Britain decided to unilaterally attack Iraq, on unproven and greatly distorted non-compliance issues, without a Security Council resolution and in the absence of a legal mechanism invoking the war powers clause of the charter, those two member countries effectively shredded the U.N. charter and destroyed the organisation’s previous consensus on prohibited weapons,” Jennings told IPS.

Annan has always maintained that he can only try to influence the Security Council but has no authority to challenge its decisions. Jennings says he could be doing more.

”Whatever his gifts as a diplomat, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has allowed the giants to play ninepins with the future of world peace without ever raising his voice above a whisper, while the very heart and soul of the institution was gutted,” he said.

”Consequently, the United Nations has almost completely lost its credibility in much of the world, being seen, quite correctly, as merely the playing field of the twenty-first century’s imperial powers.”