Annan
Memoir
Downplays Oil
for Food,
Congo and
Corruption,
Ignores W.
Sahara
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
October 22, updated
-- There is a
telling
omission,
among many, in
Kofi Annan's
2012 memoir
"Interventions."
The Oil for
Food scandal
is addressed,
how ever
self-servingly,
in five pages
-- Benon
Savan, who is
still on the
lam, is not
mentioned.
Western
Sahara, where
the UN has had
a peacekeeping
if not
referendum
mission since
before Annan
came to head
the Department
of
Peacekeeping
Operations, is
not mentioned
at all.
The
Democratic
Republic of
the Congo, in
which the UN
has had its
largest and
longest
running
peacekeeping
operation,
barely figures
in the book,
except when
Annan praises
Jacques Chirac
for sending
French
soldiers into
Ituri as
Operation
Artemis. All
four UN
Peacekeeping
chiefs since
Annan have
been from
France, with
the current
boss Herve
Ladsous
refusing to
answer any
Press
questions.
On this, Annan
was better
than his
successor(s).
Virtually
nowhere
in Annan's
book are UN
scandals or
the need for
reform
mentioned.
Annan mentions
and thanks his
top
lawyer
Nicholas
Michel --
without any
mention that
he violated
Article 100 of
the UN Charter
by having the
Swiss
government pay
for his
palatial
Manhattan
apartment
while
ostensibly
working only
for the UN.
Annan
mentions Martin
Griffith
helping him,
without noting
that he left
his employment
in Geneva
after money
went missing
under his
watch.
Alan Doss,
who pushed
UNDP to hire
his daughter
-- and did
nothing while
the person
whose job was
taken for this
nepotism was
prosecuted in
US courts --
does not
appear in the
book (but did appear,
at least until
noted, on
Annan's Syria
"dream team").
There
is a thanks to
"Angela King"
- former
adviser on
women, NOT
Angela Kane,
still at the
UN.
(Page xiii).
There
is something
regal in
Annan's
retelling of
events. Even
of the Rwandan
genocide, he
quotes
President Paul
Kagame that
"he did not
trust
Daillaire's [sic]
ability to
protect him
when he made
official
visits to the
UN field
headquarters"
(Page 53).
Annan
claims that he
established
with the
International
Monetary Fund
"an
unprecedented
level of
cooperation"
(Page 221).
But even now,
the UN's
ECOSOC and
other bodies
are
subservient to
and sometimes
ignored by the
IMF.
The
failure to
reform the UN
he blames on
developing
world
ambassadors
like Munir
Akram of
Pakistan,
writing that
Akram was
"typical" in
that he
"routinely
claimed to
have 'very
strong
instructions'
but could then
change those
instructions
if needed"
(Pages 146-7).
Amid
all this some
good work is
quietly done:
by Department
of Political
Affairs
officials like
Craig Jenness
(page 196) and
Anna
Tibaijuka.
Ban
Ki-moon
appears only
twice in the
book: asking
Annan to deal
with
post-election
violence in
Kenya, then in
connection
with Annan's
failed Syria
mediation
which is now a
selling point
for the book.
Ironically,
despite
Ban's
spokesperson's
office's
denials or stonewalling
when Inner
City Press
first asked
about it,
having heard bragging at
Singapore's
mission to the
UN, Ban
has already
collaborated
on a book --
watch this
site.
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