Critics of the US should look at some real human rights villains

SAY what you like about the US, but its approach to internal dissent is in a different league to that of countries like Saudi Arabia and Cuba.

It seems a rather obvious thing to say, but we live in a world where the obvious is constantly ignored. We are eloquent critics of the many flaws in American foreign policy and we come out in our tens of thousands against an 'illegal' war. Yet we ignore glaring abuses perpetrated by other countries and by our silence allow these to continue.

Consider the fact that from January 2003 to January 2004, Libya held the chair on the UN's Human Rights Commission. Libya is hardly known for upholding the human rights of its own citizens, never mind those of the international community. The domestic opponents of that government are either dead or they live in exile under constant threat of assassination.

Libya has no independent human rights groups, and its government exercises complete control over the press.

While there is something to be said for encouraging countries along the democratic path, one might expect that certain minimum standards would have to be met before you can chair a UN commission. No. Prior to holding the chair of this UN commission, the Libyan government still had not signed a UN Treaty to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons. And its government does not allow UN human rights monitors into the country.

Libya is not alone. Current members of the UN committee include Sudan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Syria, none of whom have stellar human rights records. Sudan is a particularly egregious offender at the moment, its government having colluded in the massacre of thousands of its own citizens.

It may well be the case that the Americans did not prepare adequately for the Iraq war, and you can make a fair argument that they didn't satisfy the conditions necessary to justify the invasion. But in the light of the UN's failings, it would be the height of naivety to say that secretary general Kofi Annan and his crew are the people to exercise wise judgement on behalf of the world. William Shawcross's book, Deliver Us From Evil, begins its account of UN peacekeeping efforts over the last decade by telling the story of American aid workers in Bosnia who designed an ingenious way to provide clean water to the besieged Muslims of that city. The engineering part worked like a dream, but local gangsters and political corruption sabotaged the plan.

This turns out to be the overarching theme of Shawcross's book the seeming powerlessness of the liberal West, embodied by the UN, in the face of malign forces. Nobody can deny that much positive work is done by the UN the obvious example being the work of our peacekeeping forces and election monitors abroad. But so much of this good work is overshadowed by UN's failure to act decisively in a crisis and the possibility of corruption at the highest level.

Kofi Annan, and his son, Kojo, are embroiled in a serious saga concerning the oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Between 1996 and 2003, the UN ran this scheme in order to alleviate the worst effects of the sanctions imposed on Iraq in the wake of the first Gulf War. The idea was that Iraq would sell oil to the outside world and use the money to buy food and medicine for its suffering citizens.

This noble aim was sabotaged, however. Charles Duelfer, the CIA operative who definitively showed that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, found that the money generated by the scheme went mostly into Saddam Hussein's coffers.

More disturbingly, Duelfer found that this money enabled Saddam to firm up his networks for hiding money and buying arms, to weaken the sanctions regime and to prepare for further rearmament, including the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

According to Duelfer's report, the oil-for-food scheme marked the revival of Saddam's fortunes. He garnered some $11 billion in illicit funds between the end of the Gulf War in 1991 and his overthrow by the US-led coalition in 2003. Most of this money was gained over the period in which this scheme was up and running.

SADDAM'S regime had virtually no other source of income; there was no tax base. Saddam used the money to make conventional arms deals, utterly illegal under the terms of UN resolutions which ended the first Gulf War.

Various Russian companies sold him anti-aircraft barrels, missile components and missile guidance electronics. Saddam also engaged in bribery on a massive scale, according to Duelfer's report, with cheap oil being sold to French and Russian government officials.

Volume I of this report which was published in early October, provides hundreds of pages of damning details. It contains detailed descriptions of oil-for-food corruption, with names, dates, methods, networks, and dollar amounts. All of this happened on Mr Annan's watch. Annan has not been forthcoming with details about the oil-for- food programme, and refuses to answer even basic questions about the names of Saddam's contractors or the terms of those contracts.

He prefers to wait for the conclusion of an investigation (paid for by remainder of the funds from the oil-for-food programme) being conducted by former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Voelker.

We can say this much for sure: not only did Mr Annan fail to see that corruption was happening, he continued to assure the outside world that the programme was utterly efficient and thoroughly audited.

And it now seems that his son, Kojo, was in receipt of payment from a Swiss company, Cotecna, which from 1999 monitored the shipments of oil-for-food supplies into Iraq under a contract with the UN.

All of this raises serious questions about Mr Annan's position. He was directly involved in the oil-for-food scheme. Shortly before he was promoted to the position of secretary-general he led the first UN team negotiating with Iraq on the issue.

Various US politicians are demanding answers. Many of President Bush's supporters in the Republican party are calling on Annan to resign. Some of these figures could be accused of having an axe to grind, given Mr Annan's recent comment that the US invasion of Iraq was illegal. But it's not just the Republicans.

The Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist think-tank of the US Democratic party, has also called for the resignation of Mr Annan, saying this is necessary for the UN to regain its credibility.

So while we are criticising US foreign policy, we might also run the rule over the UN. At the very least we can say that it suffers from a serious lack of accountability. The enrichment of a thug like Saddam in the name of a humanitarian scheme runs contrary to the original spirit of the UN, but is it really such a contradiction in the light of what we now know?