BAGHDAD, 16 April 2005 — United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has charged that the United States and Britain looked the other way while billions of dollars were siphoned off in the UN’s oil-for-food program in Iraq. Annan made his remarks late Thursday upon hearing that the US government had indicted a Texas oil executive and his British and Bulgarian associates in connection with the humanitarian program that enabled Iraq to buy food, medicine and other human necessities during the oil boycott of the 1990s.
Speaking to journalists, Annan said that the US and Britain would have been able, at any point, to stop the oil smuggling that circumvented UN sanctions. He charged that Washington and London were looking out for their allies Jordan and Turkey, who were involved in the smuggling, by keeping quiet about the abuses.
Meanwhile, an important Sunni cleric called yesterday on Iraq’s new president to buck US pressure and release and pardon the thousands of insurgents being held in Iraqi prisons, a sign the religious group most often associated with the country’s insurgency might be willing to work with the new government.
But there was no indication violence was letting up in the troubled nation, as militants set off four bombs in Baghdad, capping a bloody week of stepped-up attacks and clashes — many claimed by Iraq’s most feared terror network.
Speaking during Friday prayers, Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Al-Samarrai, a cleric in the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, said that if President “Jalal Talabani wants to begin a new page, he must first release those in jail. Secondly, there must be a full pardon.”
He also urged Talabani to refuse to “obey and kneel to pressure from” US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who would likely oppose any efforts at pardoning insurgents or prisoners.
The comments came three days after Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Iraq and urged the emerging government to avoid politicizing the Iraqi military. The US military says about 10,500 detainees are being held in Iraq. After he was sworn in as president this month, Talabani reached out to Iraq’s homegrown militants and suggested they could be pardoned, although he said the Iraqi government would continue to fight foreign insurgents.
In another development, Sunni insurgents have taken at least 60 people hostage in the town of Madaen near Baghdad and are threatening to kill them unless Shiites leave, a Shiite official who said he had been contacted by residents there said.
Also yesterday, militants exploded four bombs in the Iraqi capital, killing at least two civilians and wounding more than a dozen others, officials said.
— With input from agencies
