Conservatives, Brent Scowcroft at Odds Over UN Chief
(CNSNews.com) - One of America_s foremost conservative groups Monday dismissed efforts by former U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to support U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.While some in Congress want Annan to resign because of the U.N.'s Oil for Food program scandal, Scowcroft last week said the secretary general's critics are misplacing the blame.
"Let me just say ... that this broad oil-for-peace program was not under the secretary general, it was under the [U.N.] Security Council, formed as a committee, which oversaw the contracts and so on and so forth, and that is where the primary responsibility for any lapses lies," said Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to Republican presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush.
But Monday, Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, challenged Scowcroft's view of Annan's role in the scandal.
"It's basically saying that no one is responsible, no one is to be held accountable," Lessner told the Cybercast News Service . "If I'm not mistaken, didn't [Annan] appoint the officials who ran the Oil-for-Food program? But he had nothing to do with it? He only ... hand-picked those who ran that corrupt program."
Annan appeared at last week's Council on Foreign Relations discussion in Washington, D.C., at which time he was asked how so much money -- $21.3 billion - could have disappeared from the Oil for Food program while he was running the U.N.
"It was a unique program, a program that the U.N. has never run before, and I think it is important that ... we look at it to see where there was fraudulent behavior," Annan replied.
Scowcroft, appearing with Annan at the conference, said the U.N. member countries assigned with monitoring the administration of Resolution 661 (Oil for Food resolution) were supposed to report their observations and recommendations.
Scowcroft had earlier this month told an Internet interviewer that "as secretary general, [Annan] has been quite effective." The Oil-for-Food Program was not "a direct responsibility of the secretary general," Scowcroft said Dec. 7. "I don't understand some of the furor about this."
The United States, he added, should stop "throwing rocks at the United Nations" because the Security Council is "only as good as its primary members." Primary members include the U.S.
Critics of the United Nations maintain that Annan should take responsibility for the "lapses" in the Oil-for-Food Program. And as for Scowcroft's defense of Annan, Lessner rationalized that the former national security adviser "does come from the wing of the Republican party that's globalist and likes international organizations."
"The Secretariat runs the United Nations. This is like finding some vast corruption in Congress and saying ... the senators who appointed all these people are not responsible. The captain of the ship is the guy responsible," Lessner added.
He also disputed Scowcroft's assertion that Security Council members were more to blame than Annan. "The Security Council addresses the large policy issues. The Security Council doesn't meet to run day-to-day operations of the United Nations and its various programs," Lessner said.
"That's the responsibility of the professional staff, all of whom work for Kofi Annan. [Scowcroft's remarks are] just some kind of attempt to divert attention from the secretary general or to exculpate him for his failure of oversight," Lessner added.
Nile Gardiner, an Anglo-American security policy fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said in a Cincinnati Enquirer online column Sunday that any attempts to prevent the same kind of corruption from resurfacing in the future can only be successful if Annan steps down.
"Serious reform of the organization to make it more transparent, effective and accountable will be impossible as long as he remains in power. President Bush should insist Annan step aside -- as quickly as possible," Gardiner claimed.
"Annan's failure to fully cooperate with five major congressional investigations into Oil for Food, by refusing to release 55 internal U.N. audits, gives the impression of cover-up," Gardiner also stated, in a Dec. 15 column on the Heritage Foundation website.
Gardiner told the Enquirer that he believes the Oil-for-Food problems are merely the tip of the iceberg at the scandal-plagued, Annan-run United Nations.
"Annan has recently acknowledged and accepted organizational responsibility for a major scandal involving U.N. personnel and peacekeepers in the Congo," Gardiner noted. "The U.N. stands accused of human-rights violations against refugees on a scale that dwarfs the Abu Ghraib scandal."