WASHINGTON, 1 April 2005 — The United States said Wednesday a report on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s handling of a scandal-plagued aid program for Iraq was “troubling” and heightened the need for reform of the world body.

But deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli stopped short of saying the latest report into the oil-for-food program had undermined confidence in Annan. “We continue to support the secretary general in his work,” Ereli said.

He spoke a day after release of the report that faulted Annan for not acting aggressively enough to deal with a potential conflict of interest involving his son Kojo, who worked for one of the program’s contractors.

“Some of the findings by the Independent Inquiry Committee are troubling, particularly the failure to recognize the appearance of a conflict of interest or to convene an independent investigation,” Ereli said.

“We are pleased that the secretary general has recognized the need to correct serious management deficiencies,” he said.

“And we will endeavor, for our part, to ensure that management reform of the United Nations is a top priority, indeed a higher priority than it has ever been.”

The panel, led by former US Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, found no evidence that Annan had used his influence in the 1998 awarding of a contract to Swiss inspection firm Cotecna, which employed his son.

But it also criticized Annan’s subsequent probe into whether there was a conflict of interest regarding Kojo as “inadequate.”

Ereli responded cautiously to a question whether the report undercut confidence in Annan, who has often been at odds with the United States, to carry through a major revamp of the world body sought by Washington.

“I would say this: The secretary general has recognized the need to correct management deficiencies. He has been very outspoken and forthright in stating the need for reform in the UN,” Ereli said.

“We share this assessment. We share this commitment. And we will be working with him, and we look forward to continue working with him on this agenda.”

US Trying to ‘Destroy’ UN Rights Body

A UN human rights expert yesterday accused the United States of trying to destroy the UN’s top human rights forum, after he was denied a chance to meet officials in Washington about the US embargo on Cuba.

Jean Ziegler told journalists that has sought to meet US State Department officials dealing with the embargo on Cuba last year during a planned mission to Washington and the Caribbean island to examine the food situation in Cuba.

“The government of the United States refused to accept my request,” the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food told journalists.

Referring to proposals for reform of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, which is currently meeting in Geneva, Ziegler said: “The Bush regime not only wants to destroy the Commission, to reduce it, to bring it back to New York to control it.”

“It also wants to impose state censorship against the special rapporteurs,” he added.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s reform proposals include reducing the size of the body and installing a membership test on human rights merit, following accusations that the current 53-member Commission is dominated by countries with a record of abuse.

A spokeswoman for the US mission in Geneva confirmed that Washington had not agreed to Ziegler’s request for meetings.

“I can confirm that we didn’t agree with Mr. Ziegler’s request to meet US officials,” Brooks Robinson said.

Robinson said the embargo was a bilateral issue and did not affect other countries’ trade with Cuba. Several million dollars of US food deliveries were also allowed under the embargo, she added.

Special rapporteurs are regarded as the eyes and ears of the Commission, which appoints the independent experts to monitor particular human rights issues or problem countries.

The issue of their access to countries they seek to visit on missions is a sore point for the UN’s human rights system.

Several human rights experts, notably those dealing with Cuba and North Korea, have repeatedly been rebuffed, undermining their attempts to report on the situation there.

However, 40 countries have informally pledged a “standing invitation” granting free access to UN rights experts.

Human rights advocacy groups, including US-based Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, are advocating the system as one means of assessing a country’s viability.