UN Reform and Oil for Food

I've probably posted more on this than I wanted to but in light of the forthcoming summit for reform it is interesting to see how this plays out. As can be expected the WashTimes is all over the UN. The first story notes that the Volker report could make Kofi's reform agenda that much more difficult to pass:

"Kofi Annan's vision of U.N. reform is to make the body more powerful and intrusive -- the exact opposite of what the U.S. administration wants to see," said Nile Gardiner, who has tracked the oil-for-food investigation for the Heritage Foundation. "Not only has Annan been damaged personally, but the case for giving the U.N. greater powers is much harder to make today," he said.

The Bush administration has argued consistently that plans to expand the United Nations' mandate -- through development aid targets, an international criminal court and an expanded Security Council, among other measures -- must take a back seat to fixing the organization's basic internal machinery. "We need to reform the U.N. in a manner that will prevent another oil-for-food scandal," John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said after the report's release Wednesday. "The credibility of the U.N. depends on it."

The next piece mentions that disagreements could derail the summit. The article provides the laundry list (terrorism, Human Rights Commission, nuclear arms) of issues that the US is challenging but also clues us in that Security Council expansion has been shelved for now - a pity. I personally wouldn't mind seeing India, Japan, Germany, Brazil and S. Africa taking permanent non-veto seats. There has also been a compromise on the Millenium Goals Development - I'll have to check later to see what Jeffrey Sachs has to say.

In another less than surprising development the WSJ editorial page blasted Kofi and the UN for the Oil for Food Scandal:

So it was that the largest fraud ever recorded in history came about. Press reports often cite the overall size of Oil for Food at $60 billion, but Mr. Volcker's report makes clear that the real figure was in excess of $100 billion. From this, Saddam was able to derive $10.2 billion from illicit transactions. But the important point is that he was able to steer 10 times that sum toward his preferred clients in the service of his political aims.

None of this happened by accident. Mr. Volcker's report is replete with examples of incompetent U.N. oversight and tales of political wrangling among the permanent members of the Security Council. But the abiding fact is that it was the Western powers, not Saddam, who wanted Oil for Food at virtually any cost, because it offered the appearance of a meaningful policy in the absence of a real one, namely regime change. And it was the political convenience of this chimera that led the U.S. and the U.K. to tolerate, and the rest of the Security Council to feast on, the opportunities for corruption that were inscribed in the very nature of the program.