The Fight of His Life

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But the oil-for-food imbroglio is just part of a growing battle of wills between Washington and the Secretary-General it handpicked in 1996. While the Bush Administration is unlikely to call openly for his ouster, it doesn't mind seeing him squirm. Some members haven't forgotten Annan's unwillingness to endorse U.S. foreign policy goals, such as defeating the insurgency in Iraq or rallying the Security Council to penalize Sudan. "The Bush people have had it with Kofi Annan," says a former U.S. diplomat. "They'd like to see him go." Annan's associates say that while he has no intention of stepping down, he is feeling unprecedented pressure. "He looks good, he sounds good," says a former senior official who has worked closely with him. "But the many — and often wildly unfair — personal attacks have taken a huge toll."

The case against Kofi centers on the murk of fraud and mismanagement that occurred during the seven years of the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. In 1996 the Security Council agreed to let Saddam's regime sell oil and use the revenues to buy food and medicine to alleviate the suffering caused by economic sanctions. The U.N. was in charge of overseeing both sides of the trade, but Saddam managed to skim off more than $20 billion from the $64 billion program to prop up his rule. Records found in Iraq allege that government officials and others, notably in France, Russia and China; oil companies, including American giants; and individuals, among them the senior U.N. official appointed to run the program, received preferential deals to buy Iraqi oil at below market price. Many have denied it, and there is no hint of personal impropriety by Annan. Much of Saddam's stolen revenues came from oil sales to Jordan, Turkey and Syria, which the U.S. government and the U.N. Security Council knew about. "Should members of Congress resign," asks Senator Carl Levin, "because they turned a blind eye to illegal sales Saddam made with their full knowledge?"

But the son's questionable role in the mess casts a shadow over his father. Responsibility for making sure that only authorized goods were let into Iraq was contracted out to the Swiss firm Cotecna in December 1998, just days after Kojo Annan, working for the company in West Africa, terminated his employment. When that connection emerged earlier this year, the Secretary-General said, "Neither he nor I had anything to do with contracts for Cotecna," and congressional investigators have found no evidence that either did. But as news broke that Kojo continued to be paid a monthly fee of $2,500 by Cotecna through February 2004, Annan found himself in the embarrassing position of having to make a fresh denial. "He is an independent businessman," the Secretary-General said last week. "I don't get involved with his activities, and he doesn't get involved in mine." Kojo's lawyer and Cotecna say Kojo's work had nothing to do with Iraq and that the money was the legitimate fee, required under Swiss law, for a "non-compete" agreement preventing Kojo from working for company rivals in West Africa.

Annan has appointed an independent panel led by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, to investigate the scandal. Some U.S. lawmakers are annoyed that Volcker, who expects to deliver a preliminary report to Annan in January, has refused to hand over internal audits or compel U.N. employees to testify in Washington. Volcker says all those congressional inquiries would compromise and delay his work. But some of those Congressmen wonder aloud if the U.N. can be trusted to investigate itself.