The hounding of Kofi Annan

Last night in New York, the UN secretary-general was given a standing ovation - a robust response to a series of attacks in past weeks. So who is behind the slurs and why? Anne Penketh reports

It allegedly involves sex, lies, a webcast - and above all, lorryloads of cash. The whiff of scandal has been swirling around the UN for months. But now Kofi Annan himself, the man handpicked by the Americans to lead the organisation seven years ago, is on the ropes.

It allegedly involves sex, lies, a webcast - and above all, lorryloads of cash. The whiff of scandal has been swirling around the UN for months. But now Kofi Annan himself, the man handpicked by the Americans to lead the organisation seven years ago, is on the ropes.

UN officials - excluding Mr Annan - are among those accused of benefiting from a gigantic scam in which Saddam Hussein was able to skim billions of dollars from a UN programme intended to help the sanctions-hit Iraqi people. But the clamour only reached fever pitch when influential Republicans, acting with the assumed backing of the White House, called for the resignation of Mr Annan. Some would not stop there: Congressman Scott Garrett said earlier this week that the question was "whether he should be in jail".

Yesterday the rest of the world rose up to show the Bush administration what they thought about such suggestions, by blowing the equivalent of a diplomatic raspberry in the direction of Washington. The ambassadors of 191 countries, gathered in the General Assembly hall to hear Mr Annan present a blueprint for UN reform, rose to their feet to give the beleaguered secretary-general a spontaneous standing ovation. Even the head of the American delegation was shamed into clapping. "Everybody stood up. It lasted a good few minutes," said one diplomat present.

Mr Annan has been brought personally into the frame because his son, Kojo, worked for a company that was given contracts with the now-controversial oil for food scheme in Iraq. He admitted last week that he was "disappointed" after the UN disclosed that his son had worked for the Geneva-based company, Cotecna, for four years longer than he had first admitted. Kojo Annan maintains that all reported payments to him were legally proper and did not relate to the Iraq programme.

But even without the personal link to the UN secretary-general, the head of one of the congressional committees now investigating the oil for food scandal, Norm Coleman, was already convinced that Mr Annan should go because "the most extensive fraud in the history of the UN occurred on his watch". When President Bush pointedly declined to express support for Mr Annan at the end of last week, the UN held its breath.

Other world leaders were not slow to react, however. It was as though God had called for the Pope to resign. On Monday, Tony Blair rushed to the secretary-general's rescue, saying Mr Annan was doing "a fine job ... often in very difficult circumstances."

On Tuesday, Jacques Chirac hinted darkly that Mr Annan's critics had a hidden agenda, saying that he had telephoned the UN secretary-general to express his support. "At a time when some voices - whose underlying motives are open to question - are trying to call into question the merits ... of Mr Kofi Annan, all of us in Europe, and indeed in Africa and Asia, consider it legitimate to express our gratitude and our friendship to the UN Secretary General," Mr Chirac said.

On Tuesday, at a lunch of the 15 UN Security Council members, there was unanimity around the table - which included the outgoing US ambassador - that Mr Annan should not step down. "Nobody in the room called for Kofi Annan's resignation. On the contrary, we all expressed our confidence in the secretary-general," said German Ambassador Gunter Pleuger.

But the reaction from the American diplomat, John Danforth, seemed less than whole-hearted. Like Mr Bush, he had previously sidestepped questions when asked whether the secretary-general should resign. On Tuesday, he said "I have great confidence in the secretary-general." But he tempered his remark by adding that the investigation into the oil-for-food scandal should be pursued in a "thorough and objective fashion. And you can't make up your mind before the facts are in."

The 54 African nations represented in the UN and the 25-member European Union also backed the secretary-general, who insisted on Tuesday night that he was determined to carry on at the helm. "We have a major agenda next year, and the year ahead, trying to reform this organisation," said the soft-spoken UN chief without losing his famous cool.

But Mr Annan's woes have already overshadowed his launch of the UN reform report, billed by its authors as the biggest shake-up of the UN in its 60-year history. According to seasoned UN observers, it's not just the oil-for-food scandal that has prompted the "get Kofi" campaign by UN-bashing American conservatives, scenting blood after the convincing re-election of George Bush last month.

Mr Annan, who kept a low profile in the run-up to the Iraq war, clearly angered the Bush administration by declaring the war to be illegal. At the height of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the Americans saw the hand of Mr Annan behind moves to end the exemption of US soldiers from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. The UN is also under attack for widespread sexual abuse by its peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo, and has been accused of contributing to the US failure in Iraq by failing to provide adequate support for the election process.

Separately, Mr Annan has faced criticism from UN staff members, who say that he has been ineffective in following up sexual harassment charges.

The campaign to remove him as UN chief has been bolstered by a TV video on the website of a Republican action group, which calls for the UN to be kicked out of New York, where it sits on prime real estate on Manhattan's East River. The voiceover of "Get the UN out of the USA", which runs over pictures of Yasser Arafat cradling a Kalashnikov, accuses the UN of becoming an "apologist and defender of terrorists and their agents". It claims that money diverted by Saddam Hussein from the UN-administered oil-for-food programme was used to pay the Palestinian families of suicide bombers and to fund the Iraq-based insurgency. "It's time we sent a message to the UN: we're not going to tolerate their conduct any more," it says.

The series of attacks on the UN prompted a group of senior officials to write an unprecedented petition last week, approved by more than 3,000 staff members, to denounce the prevailing "poisoned atmosphere" and express support for Mr Annan. "Guilty until proven innocent" prevails in the minds of many of these UN critics," the petition says.

But UN diplomats remain uncertain as to whether the latest moves by some Republicans to ditch Mr Annan are being orchestrated by the White House. "There's no doubt that there is a [faction] in Congress and in the media using a whole raft of issues to gun for the institution, and the way of doing that is through the person of the UN secretary-general," said one European diplomat. "But we've not heard that it came from the White House."

Another mused that the White House may be content with a shot across the bows: "maybe a damaged, lame-duck secretary-general would be even more convenient than a new person who would be pressing actively for reform." Prefiguring yesterday's scene in the General Assembly, the diplomat added that the rest of the world would fiercely resist any attempt by the US to remove Mr Annan.

As for the charges against the UN and its secretary-general, everything now hinges on the outcome of the investigations into the oil-for-food scandal, with the first UN probe expected to produce a report in January. Five congressional investigations are also under way.

UN officials say that the accusations of wrongdoing have been grossly exaggerated by the Republican fringe. According to Mr Coleman, Saddam diverted $21.3bn from the Iraq programme. But UN officials point out that this figure included all the illegal revenue obtained by Saddam since sanctions were imposed in 1991, and not just the funds from illicit surcharges and kickbacks under the Iraq programme.

Some US commentators have now recognised that all the contracts for Iraq in the $64bn oil-for-food programme were approved by the sanctions committee of the UN Security Council - whose permanent members include the US.

While US conservatives seized on the initial allegations in the oil-for-food scandal to accuse anti-war countries France and Russia of illegally accepting Saddam's bribes, it now turns out that American companies and individuals are being investigated. The most serious charge against the UN is that its top administrator of the oil-for-food programme accepted bribes.

As for the accusations that the UN has failed to support the Americans in Iraq, a senior UN official pointed out that the UN reticence can be traced to the bomb that blew up its representative in Baghdad and 21 other people in September last year. "They say that we're not doing enough. But we're not supposed to be running the elections. The Iraqis are," said the official.

In the light of yesterday's stirring show of support, the political tide appeared to be turning in Mr Annan's favour. He made it clear that he will not be intimidated by the US, by signalling that he intends to serve out the remaining two years. He has weathered other storms that failed to trigger his removal. As head of UN peacekeeping, he ignored warnings that a genocide was taking place in Rwanda in 1994, and did nothing to stop the 1995 massacres of Muslims in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica. He has apologised for both.

Although the Americans can make his life difficult, as they fund a quarter of the UN budget, they can only replace him by obtaining the agreement of the other permanent Security Council members. At present, veto-holding powers such as Britain and France are firmly sticking with Mr Annan.