UN report finds laspes, faults oil-for-food chief

He intends to release a preliminary report on Thursday afternoon, and a final one in June.“We have found in each case that the procurement process was tainted, failing to follow the established rules of the organization designed to assure fairness and accountability,” Volcker wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. “The findings do not make for pleasant reading,” he said.

But he said the UN administration of the program appeared to be “free of systematic or widespread abuse.”

Volcker said allegations of conflict of interest by Kofi Annan would be handled in a latter report. Annan’s son Kojo, had worked in West Africa for a firm under contract to the United Nations in Iraq.

Annan told reporters on he had already drawn up plans to make managers more accountable. Volcker’s article zeroed in on Benon Sevan, the UN undersecretary-general in charge of the oil-for-food program, who had been accused of steering oil contracts to a firm in the Middle East.

“The evidence is conclusive that Mr. Sevan, in effectively participating in the selection of purchasers of oil under the program, placed himself in an irreconcilable conflict of interest,” Volcker wrote.

12 Iraqi soldiers killed

BAGHDAD: Insurgents dragged Iraqi soldiers off a bus and shot 12 of them dead in the bloodiest attack on security forces since last weekend’s historic election, the Iraqi Army said on Thursday. Two soldiers survived and fled to a nearby village after their bus was ambushed near Kirkuk late on Wednesday. The soldiers had been returning from vacation. Two US Marines were also killed in Anbar. Insurgents staged a major ambush on a road near Baghdad on Thursday, killing two cops, wounding 14 and leaving at least 16 missing on the worst day of violence since last Sunday’s election. —Reuters