In Fact...

SO MUCH FOR THE UN 'SCANDAL'

From our UN correspondent Ian Williams: The "biggest financial scandal in the history of mankind," as Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard put it, is ending with a whimper, not a bang. On March 29 Paul Volcker's inquiry into the UN's Oil for Food program cleared UN Secretary General Kofi Annan of using his influence to award an inspection contract to Cotecna, the company that had employed his son Kojo. It did reprimand the Secretary General for not having had a more thorough investigation when the allegations were first made in 1999; it accused Kojo and Cotecna of lying both to the elder Annan and the investigators about their continuing relationship; and it rapped over the knuckles the head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services for employing a Singaporean compatriot with Oil for Food program money. (Oddly enough, this is the very body it says Annan should have tapped to investigate the allegations against him in 1999.) Volcker referred to how thoroughly "scrubbed" the UN had been by his inquiry, and his exoneration should free Annan to carry on with his UN reform package--except that the people who invented the "scandal" will not go away so easily. For them, Volcker's judicious "no evidence" of wrongdoing by Kofi Annan is simply evidence of lack of assiduity on the inquiry's part. For conservatives like Representative Henry Hyde and Senator Norm Coleman, the UN and Annan are always guilty, and it is just a case of finding a new occasion to say so. But the tables could turn yet on the UN-bashers. Volcker promised that his panel's final report this summer will examine the part played by diplomats on the sanctions committee and the Security Council and their governments in the Oil for Food program. That should be interesting, since the panel will reveal Washington's benign indifference to Saddam's oil sales to neighboring states, reported to Congress and ignored, and will reveal how every contract within the program was scrutinized in Washington. It will also be very interesting to see whether the Administration opens its books to Volcker in the way that Hyde and his colleagues insisted the UN must do for Congress--and whether the American media will pay attention to the results.

INDIA BACKS OFF AIDS MEDS

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