[Rhodes22-list] (no subject)

[pdgrand at nospam.wmis.net]

April 28, 2004 -- ANYONE who pines for genuine international 
multilateralism would do well to follow the bribes now being uncovered in 
the United Nations' Oil-for- Food scandal. 
Why did France and Russia oppose efforts to topple Saddam Hussein's regime? 
And why did they press constantly, throughout the '90s, for an expansion of 
Iraqi oil sales? Was it their empathy for the starving children of that 
impoverished nation? Their desire to stop the United States from arrogantly 
imposing its vision upon the Middle East? 

It now looks like they it was simply because they were on the take. Saddam 
was their cash cow. If President Bush has suffered some discredit over his 
apparently false - but not disingenuous - claims of Iraqi weapons of mass 
destruction, the lapse is minor compared to the outright personal 
selfishness and criminality that appears to have motivated many of those 
who opposed his efforts to rid the world of one of its worst dictators. 

Throughout the '90s, France and Russia badgered the United States and 
Britain to increase Iraqi oil production. President Bill Clinton and Prime 
Minister Tony Blair fought them at each step, but then reluctantly gave 
way. First Iraq was allowed to sell 500,000 barrels daily. Then, on Franco-
Russian insistence, it was raised to 1 million, then to 2 million and, 
finally, to 3 million barrels a day. 

Each time, America and Britain - the nations now accused of coveting Iraqi 
oil - resisted the increases in Iraqi production and urged tighter controls 
over the program. Each time, the French and the Russians prattled on about 
the rights of Iraqi sovereignty and the need to feed the children. 

Now we know why the French and Russians were so insistent. Iraqi government 
documents (leaked to the Baghdad newspaper Al Mada) list at least 270 
individuals and entities who got vouchers allowing them to sell Iraqi oil - 
and to keep much of the money. These vouchers, and the promise of instant 
great wealth they carried with them, bought vital support in the United 
Nations to let Saddam stay in power. 

The list of those receiving these bribes includes France's former French 
Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (who's a leader of Chirac's party) and 
Patrick Maugein, the head of the French Oil firm Soco International. 
France's former U.N. ambassador, Jean-Bernard Merimee, got vouchers to sell 
11 million barrels. 

  

In Russia, the payoff chain reached right into the "office of the Russian 
president." President Vladimir Putin's Peace and Unity Party also got 
vouchers, as did the Soviet-era Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov and the 
Russian Orthodox Church. Nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky shared in 
the largesse. 

Not to be left behind, the Rev. Jean Marie Benjamin of the Vatican got the 
rights to sell 4.5 million barrels as recompense for setting up a meeting 
between Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and the pope. 

Indeed, the list indicates that Benon Sevan, the United Nations official in 
charge of the Oil-for-Food program. received vouchers. He denies the 
charge, but has decided to retire next month anyway. 

At the start of the Oil-for-Food program, America and Britain proposed that 
the money flow only to accounts entirely controlled by the United Nations. 
Soon this standard was lowered to include accounts not actually controlled 
by the United Nations, but only monitored by it. 

Then-Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) warned that "oil is fungible" and 
noted that once Iraq was allowed to pump and sell it, Saddam could sell all 
he wanted outside of officially sanctioned channels and nobody could tell 
which black liquid was legal and which not. But nobody imagined that there 
were actual bribes going to specific French, Russian and U.N. officials as 
part of the program. 

Now it appears that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's sanctimonious posturing 
may have concealed oil bribes which reached high up in the ranks of the 
U.N. organization itself. 

The defect of international coalitions is that they include the just and 
the unjust, the bribed and the honest, the democratic and the autocratic. 
And their members cannot be trusted equally. The group that stood up and 
backed the invasion of Iraq was nicknamed "the Coalition of the Willing." 
Now it appears it was also "the Coalition of the Honest."