The Press Room: Oil-for-Food: Indictments Soon?
10/13/04 02:24 PM
http://www.heritage.org
Lost amid the political spin following top weapons inspector Charles Duelfer’s testimony to Congress on the findings of the Iraq Survey Group have the been shocking revelations about the part played in the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal (roundup and links here) by key “allies” who opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
“In late 2002 and early 2003, France, Russia and China led the anti-war movement at the UN…the real explanation for the opposition of [these countries] to the war was that [their] political establishments were deeply implicated in a lucrative scam to divert the profits of the UN's oil-for-food programme into their own private coffers,” writes Con Coughlin in the Sunday Telegraph.
That “France and Russia received 45 per cent of [oil] vouchers, with China coming third” was not coincidental. Rather, as Steven Komarow writes in USA Today, Saddam Hussein “targeted countries and individuals who could help him evade economic sanctions and eventually overturn them.” According to Coughlin, the Iraq Survey Group found that “[i]n France, the vouchers were given to a number of politicians with close links to [President Jacques] Chirac, while in Russia they were paid directly to [President Vladimir] Putin's private office, providing him with his own ready-made slush fund. This confirms the findings of an earlier report prepared for the interim Iraqi government.
While France, Russia, and China’s financial interest in opposing the war in Iraq have long been known, Duelfer’s report also discovered that Saddam used funds from Oil-for-Food “to fund illicit imports of weapons and the technology needed to resume production of weapons of mass destruction” from these same nations (news stories for the New York Times, Washington Post, as well as commentary from National Review Online).
Last week, we noted that firms in both Russia and France supplied Iraq with weapons in violation of U.N. sanctions. Today, as we noted and the Washington Times reports, Duelfer found that “China…was bribed by Saddam with oil sales and weapons deals into working to end U.N. sanctions.” In the most egregious violation, “China…supplied rocket guidance software to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission in 2002 that was labeled ‘children's software’ to mask its military nature.” While the Iraq Survey Group “sought to clear the Chinese government of a direct role in the illicit trade…the companies involved were ‘state-owned’ firms that were newly privatized.”
As Coughlin explains, Duelfer’s report demonstrates that “Saddam's clever manipulation of the voucher system was a brilliant success,” to the extent that, according to Duelfer, “sitting members of the Security Council were actively violating resolutions passed by the Security Council.”
Oil-for-Food corruption, continues Coughlin,
not only caused a deep split within the security council, it helped him to make irrelevant the much-vaunted policy of containment that was supposed to prevent him from re-emerging as a dominant force in the Middle East.
How important were Saddam’s ill-gotten Oil-for-Food revenues, totaling some $10 billion and accumulated through a system of kickbacks and oil smuggling, to this planned re-armament?
Writes Claudia Rosett:
Oil-for-Food pretty much was Saddam Hussein's weapons program…It was out of these oil flows, condoned (but not well metered) by the U.N., that Saddam derived virtually all income for the astounding roster of political bribery and illicit arms transactions detailed in [Duelfer’s] report.
Yet, she continues,
no one has ever heard these facts from the U.N. itself, certainly not from…the man most directly responsible for protecting the honor of the institution, Secretary-General [Kofi] Annan…The U.N. deflects all such issues to its own self-investigation, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — who has continued Annan's practice of keeping secret even such basic information as who bought how much bargain-priced oil from Saddam, and who has deferred all question-answering of substance until he delivers his report, maybe sometime next year.
Annan’s reticence is understandable, given that his organization, son, and hand-picked program director have all been implicated in the scandal.
With the Volcker Commission lacking in credibility, Congressional investigations (particularly this one) have done an admirable job picking up the slack and received some good advice. Now, as Newsweek reports, federal prosecutors are expected to issue indictments in the Oil-for-Food scandal within the next month. As the investigation moves into the criminal sphere, it’s time for full disclosure from the U.N.
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