UN employees were readying on Friday to make a historic vote of no confidence in scandal-plagued Secretary General Kofi Annan, sources told AFP.
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The UN staff union, in what officials said was the first vote of its kind in the more than 50-year history of the United Nations, was set to approve a resolution withdrawing its support for the embattled Annan and UN management.
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Annan has been in the line of fire over a high-profile series of scandals including controversy about a UN aid programme that investigators say allowed deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to embezzle billions of dollars.
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But staffers said the trigger for the no-confidence measure was an announcement this week that Annan had pardoned the UN's top oversight official, who was facing allegations of favouritism and sexual harassment. The union had requested a formal probe into the behaviour of the official, Dileep Nair, after employees accused him of harassing members of his staff and violating UN rules on the hiring and promotion of workers. Top UN spokesman Fred Eckhard announced on Tuesday that Nair had been exonerated by Annan "after a thorough review" by the UN's senior official in charge of management, Catherine Bertini.
Annan underlined that he "had every confidence" in Nair, Eckhard said, but UN employees ridiculed the decision and claimed that investigators had not questioned the staff union, which first raised the complaints in April. "This was a whitewash, pure and simple," Guy Candusso, a senior member of the staff union, told AFP. Candusso noted that Eckhard's declaration to the press had said that "no further action was necessary in the matter." But in a letter sent to the union, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, Annan's chief of staff Iqbal Riza said Nair had been "advised that he should exercise caution" in future to "minimise the risk of negative perception."
In a resolution set to be adopted on Friday, the union said Riza's statement "substantiates the contention of the staff that there was impropriety" and that there exists "a lack of integrity, particularly at the higher levels of the organisation." The draft resolution, also obtained exclusively by AFP, calls on the union president to "convey this vote of no confidence to the secretary general." Staffers who asked not to be named, afraid that speaking out could damage their future prospects in the United Nations, said the Nair decision was emblematic of widespread corruption by Annan and his senior staff. They noted that Riza, UN undersecretary general for communications Shashi Tharoor and other top officials had served directly under Annan at least since 1994, when he was head of UN peacekeeping operations. At the time, the United Nations was widely criticised for failing to stop the Rwanda genocide that left 800,000 people dead, even though UN peacekeepers were on the ground -- a catastrophe for which Annan has publicly apologised.
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Annan could not be reached for immediate comment. He is currently in Africa on a high-profile mission aimed at ending the long-running civil war in Sudan. |