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POLITICS: U.N. Chief Tries to Boost Staff Morale, Faults Media Attacks

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 5 2005 (IPS) - When U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard announced last week that his boss Kofi Annan would address the 8,000 staff members at U.N. headquarters – amid the relentless attack on the world body by the news media – he was asked whether any staffer asking pointed questions from the secretary-general would be penalised for doing so.

"This is not a gulag,” Eckhard responded. ”This is the United Nations."

And so, after facing a barrage of criticism – mostly from neoconservatives and right-wing newspapers in the United States – Annan decided Tuesday to address staff members in an attempt to boost sagging morale in the organisation.

”I know it has cast a shadow over all of us and you have no idea what a personal pain it has been for me as secretary-general and as a father having to deal with the situation,” he said.

In an hour-long question-and-answer session in the cavernous General Assembly hall, Annan was both apologetic and distressed by the growing scandal that continues to engulf the world body.

”To see the institution you work for being hammered, day in and day out, whether it is right or not, it does hurt and it does affect morale,” he told staffers.

But Guy Candusso, vice president of the U.N. Staff Union, told IPS that there were ”lots of staffers with questions” for Annan, but they never had a chance to ask him.

”It should not take a crisis for the secretary-general to meet his staff,” Candusso said. ”He should meet the staff on a more regular basis – maybe once a month, maybe once a quarter.”

The far bigger story – of mismanagement, corruption, nepotism and sexual harassment in the U.N. system worldwide – is also refusing to die.

Perhaps the most critical personal attacks on the secretary-general relate to his son Kojo Annan, who had failed to disclose to his father the full extent of his business dealings with a questionable Swiss company with U.N. contracts.

Annan told staffers that it was ”unfortunate” that his son Kojo ”seems to have been associated somehow with this (oil-for-food) programme.”

Taking a passing shot at the news media, he said: ”You work for a great organisation. Do not believe the caricature of an organisation that you read in the press. I want us all to be proud of the organisation we work for, proud of the work we do, and to be determined to move ahead.”

Eckhard, who faces the daily torment of intense questioning by the media, was equally critical of news media when he told reporters last week: ”Your editorials, your cartoon drawings with the secretary-general with mounds of money on his desk, that he had improperly interfered in the awarding of contracts, and that he had benefited financially from that – that’s what was going around the world, smearing the secretary-general’s reputation.”

An exhaustive report released last month by a three-member U.N.-appointed independent committee not only faulted Kojo Annan for intentionally deceiving his father but also for continuing a financial relationship with Cotecna Inspection Services, the Swiss company he worked for.

The company continued to pay him as much as 450,000 dollars as consulting fees, a sizeable part of it even after he left the company. The secretary-general says he was not aware of this relationship between his son and Cotecna.

After the report was released, the secretary-general claimed that he was personally exonerated of any wrongdoing in the now-defunct, scandal-plagued 67-billion-dollar oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

But he did agree with the committee’s finding about a lapse in judgment on his part for not conducting a formal investigation after he became aware that the company his son worked for had won a U.N. contract.

The secretary-general was given a standing ovation when he entered the assembly hall but at the same time staffers cheered at comments that were critical of the world body.

Asked how the secretary-general felt about this, Eckhard told reporters Tuesday he thought that Annan ”heard the staff loud and clear.”

The criticisms of the United Nations have continued to mount over the last few months.

Annan’s former chief of staff Iqbal Riza is accused of shredding documents going back to 1997. But Riza says he did so because he was running out of space in his office .

Although the gesture was a routine exercise in an organisation which is a veritable paper factory – and despite the fact that Riza’s office did not oversee the oil-for-food programme – the very act of shredding files at a time when the United Nations was under close scrutiny has triggered several conspiracy theories.

At least two of Annan’s under-secretaries-general have also been accused of acting improperly – one for misusing oil-for-food revenues by creating a new post for his countryman from Singapore, and the other for dismissing in less than 24 hours an investigation that warranted a more in-depth probe.

In February, another under-secretary-general, a former Dutch prime minister, was forced to resign following charges of sexual harassment.

And last week there were reports of a string of management abuses, including public humiliation of staff, favouritism and sexual harassment, at the U.N.’s Electoral Assistance Division which supervised the recent elections in Iraq.

All these scandals have followed widespread charges of rape, child molestation, and sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and also in Haiti.

How does a secretary-general survive in such a climate? The U.N. press corps has been particularly harsh, refusing to take no for an answer.

Last week, one of the reporters even accused Annan of letting his longtime friends and colleagues take the blame for all wrongdoing and using them as scapegoats to save his own skin.

Perhaps no secretary-general in the 60-year history of the world body has been under siege as Annan is now. The rash of accusations are not against him personally but primarily against an institution in deep trouble.

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which was critical of Annan for his opposition to the U.S.-led war on Iraq, is standing by Annan. So are the other 190 member states.

But is a beleaguered secretary-general politically capable of steering his ambitious plans, unveiled last month, to radically restructure the ailing organisation? How many are willing to take him seriously when his management style is under fire?

Asked if he would resign over the continued attacks on the world body, Annan told reporters last month: ”Hell, no.”

But one of the reporters told the U.N. news briefing last week: ”There’s talk in some of the more conspiracy-minded quarters that what certain powerful members of the United Nations (read: United States) would like is to have a weakened secretary-general who doesn’t resign, is still in place, but cut off at the knees." Does Annan really fit that mould?