New York, May. 06, 2004 (C-fam.org/CWNews.com) - Saddam Hussein's government once attempted to bribe a developing world government in exchange for its support on the Security Council, according to the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute. A diplomat from the unidentified country said that Iraq offered his nation a massive contract to buy agricultural products and it was clear that the contract was to ensure that the country had a financial stake in the continuation of the Hussein regime.

Information continues to surface about widespread bribes through the United Nation's "Oil-for-Food" program, especially about alleged complicity by senior UN personnel in Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's theft of billions of dollars earmarked to feed the Iraqi people.

The "Oil-for-Food" program was set up in 1996 under the economic sanctions regime administered by the UN following the 1991 Gulf War. While the program was intended to ensure that the oil Iraq was allowed to sell on the international market was used to buy food and humanitarian supplies, documents released since the fall of Hussein's regime last year have revealed that millions of barrels of oil, and the revenues from their sale, were diverted to officials and citizens of several nations and the UN, including a Vatican monsignor.

Serious questions are now being raised about the UN's ability to carry out honest and efficient international social policies, and even about the UN's very legitimacy. The Washington Post editorialized on March 26 that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "owes it to the Iraqis to make this investigation real and thorough. If the United Nations cannot disprove its critics-- and punish wrongdoers, if any-- it will be harder to trust the organization to manage humanitarian and peacekeeping missions in the future."

A Republican Policy Committee report, released earlier this week by Senator Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, echoed the Post's sentiments, saying, "The UN's failures in Iraq need to be accounted for and assessed; and the UN needs to restore credibility with Iraqis and the world... It is the scope of the scandal that calls into question the UN's ability to play a responsible role in any crisis, post-intervention administration, or humanitarian operation. It is more than botching their biggest such operation to date: This seems to be so large an error that it is necessary to examine the very premise of the UN bureaucracy and its involvement in significant international programs."

"For the UN to be seen as legitimate," the report concludes, it "must reform itself to ensure that future UN humanitarian operations are not ripe for such abuses." The report suggests that "Kofi Annan should testify before the UN investigatory panel [in the US Congress] to show that the Secretary General is taking this scandal seriously and also to demonstrate that no one in the UN is above the law."

The US General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that, between 1997 and 2002, Saddam Hussein received $10.1 billion in illegal revenue from the program. It is further alleged that not only did the UN turn a blind eye to Hussein's activities, UN officials may have also profited by them. According to the Republican Policy Committee Report, "On January 25, 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council released documents suggesting that Saddam Hussein, UN officials (including Oil-for-Food program director Benon Sevan), well-connected governments (including some UN Security Council members), and private individuals all benefited from the manipulation of the UN-administered program. Those involved with this scandal allegedly utilized illegal oil shipments, financial transactions, kickbacks, and surcharges... The corruption and abuse... may have contributed to the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis."