The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 42 Issue: 11 - Friday, March 11, 2005
The Scandal That Will Not Die
President Bush's appointment of tough-talking John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN could not have come at a more opportune moment in history. As R Emmett Tyrrell noted in his Washington Times column, "[p]ossibly Mr. Bolton will fulfill the historic role of becoming America's last ambassador to the U.N. No gravy train lasts forever."
Kofi Annan has run the UN as if it were some Third World African dictatorship, handing out sweetheart deals in exchange for favors with an abandon that would shock even entrenched dictators like Murbarak or the House of Saud.
One of Annan's close personal friends is former Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov. Being a friend of Kofi's, Primakov was handpicked to serve on a panel dedicated to bringing 'reform' to the United Nations.
Primakov was appointed as one of a 16-person panel of political has-beens and diplomats from across the globe.
The enormity of the scope of the mission handed to this panel of 'wise men' is understood by a closer examination of their actual mandate.
The panel was asked to assess the global threat facing mankind, to consider how collective action might address them and to get back to Annan advising how the UN should be reformed to make it all possible.
There wasn't a peep from the mainstream press when Annan handpicked Primakov for the job. It turns out that Primakov ALSO has direct links to the Oil-For-Food scandal through his sister.
In the mid-90's while the US was trying to get the Russians to broker a deal to end the standoff between Saddam and the UN weapons inspection team, the US turned a blind eye to the establishment of a Russian oil company, set up in Cyprus and run by Primakov's sister.
Primakov was able to arrange for Iraq to sell oil under the Oil-For-Food program to his sister's oil company at heavy discounts, and then resold it at full market value to primarily U.S. companies, splitting the difference evenly with Primakov and the Iraqis.
This U.S.-sponsored deal resulted in profits of hundreds of millions of dollars for both the Russians and Iraqis, outside the control of oil-for-food.
Annan knew when he was bringing Primakov into the cadre of 'wise men' that Primakov was already in Saddam's pocket. It isn't like Annan shouldn't have known --the relationship between Saddam and Primakov is well documented.
"The most recent example of the enduring nature of the Primakov and Saddam relationship is Russia’s secret $160 million deal to reinforce Iraq’s air defenses and upgrade squadrons of Mig fighters," Dr. Andrew Campbell wrote in the National Observer in the winter of 1999.
"Primakov approved this transaction in meetings with the Iraqi Deputy Premier, Tariq Aziz, in December 1998. The agreements were signed in Moscow on 13 January, 1998."
As a senior British Foreign Official commented to the media: `It is almost beyond belief that a permanent member of the Security Council could authorize such a flagrant breach of the United Nations arms embargo. It indicates that Russian relations with Iraq have become a great deal closer since Mr. Primakov became prime minister.’"
"A bodyguard of truth would publicly and truthfully identify Dr. Yevgeny Primakov and Saddam Hussein as the world’s most dangerous political relationship."
But the UN's preference is to hide behind a bodyguard of lies instead.
Assessment:
The more one looks into Oil-for-Food, the dirtier it gets. In the early 1990's, Boutros Boutros-Ghali was Secretary-General of the UN and Kofi Annan was his deputy.
Boutros-Ghali stepped down in 1996 and was replaced by Annan. The very next year, Annan's appointed Oil-For-Food program czar Benon Sevan steered an oil allocation to one of Boutros-Ghali's relatives who owned a small Panamanian oil trading company. Boutros-Gahli (or his relatives) made a million and a half dollars on that one deal.
The investigation also uncovered collusion between former British ambassador to the UN John Weston and Kofi's Kingdom, steering a major oil inspection contract to a British company without proper bidding. At about that same time, Seven’s aunt allegedly 'sent' him $160,000 in cash, before conveniently dying.
Kofi Annan's son Kobe is up to his neck in dirty oil deals through his role as a 'consultant' to Kotechna, a firm that made millions thanks to Oil-For-Food contracts that started flowing in as soon as Kobe went on staff. The relationship was so profitable that Kotechna continued to pay Kobe's salary for three years after he left the firm, (until the arrangement went public).
Now we learn that Annan's nephew, Kobina, was awarded a job working for the law firm of Ruder-Finn, run by another old friend of Kofi's named David Finn.
At the same time that Ruder-Finn employed Annan's nephew, two senior Ruder-Finn officials, Anne Glauber and Dena Merriam, who is Mr. Finn's daughter, were hired as outside contractors by the U.N. Development Program to revamp its communications office. They were paid $30,000 for two months' work.
Five years ago, Ruder-Finn used the UN and Kofi Annan as the backdrop to a global summit on religion organized by Finn. The Millennium World Peace Summit is a non-profit group.
Its trustees were Finn, his daughter and Ruder-Finn's ethics advisor, Bawa Jain, to whom the UN paid $80,000.
It is possible that all this is merely coincidental and had nothing to do with UN officials using their connections to enrich themselves through their families? How many of YOUR relatives were involved in the Oil-For-Food scandal?
The UN has, in the past decade, sat back and allowed genocide to be conducted unchecked in hellholes such as Rwanda and the Sudan.
It has allowed rogue nations to acquire weapons of mass destruction and to pose a threat to world peace out of all proportion to each nation's strength and importance.
U.N. peacekeepers are being investigated for rape and rampage in Africa. As many as ten thousand women and young girls are estimated to have been raped by UN peacekeepers in the Congo.
The UN has become a theater of the absurd in which the UN Human Rights Commission seats such nations like Cuba, Zimbabwe and Syria -- but once voted the US off the commission altogether.
And who can forget the 2001 International Conference on Racism the UN organized in Durban, South Africa that demonstrated the depth and breadth of the UN's institutional anti-Semitism?
Enter John Bolton, the man who called North Korea as "a hellish nightmare" governed by a "tyrannical dictator." Bolton was selected precisely for his abrasive, no-nonsense, eyes-wide-open attitude toward the world body.
It is hard to imagine that Bolton will have much impact on changing UN policies, but it is unlikely that he will fall victim to the UN's seduction. Bolton is on record as having said the United Nations is so corrupt that it is 'irredeemable'.
Which is why R. Emmett Tyrrell suspects Bolton may be the USA's last ambassador to the UN.
While Europe waits in the wings.
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