Angry in the Great White North

From Reuters, via ABC News:

The United Nations urgently needs stronger executive leadership and sweeping reforms to prevent the type of "illicit, unethical and corrupt behavior" that marked the $64 billion oil-for-food program for Iraq, a year-long inquiry found.

The investigation by the Independent Inquiry Committee, headed by Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, to be released on Wednesday, says the United Nations was ill-equipped to handle a program of that magnitude "or even programs of a lesser scope."

Makes you wonder why the UN thinks it can help with the Katrina disaster. Sounds like more money would be wasted, or worse, stolen:

"An adequate framework of controls and auditing was absent," said the report's introduction, obtained by Reuters. "There were, in fact, instances of corruption among senior staff as well as in the field."

The full report will disclose "serious instances of illicit, unethical and corrupt behavior, but the administrative difficulties are not only, or even primarily, a case of personal malfeasance," the inquiry said.

In fact, Volcker gives Kofi Annan a pass:

As for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Volcker committee said no secretary-general had ever been chosen for his managerial or administrative skills and did not have a structure that would produce strong executive oversight.

Annan, the report said, is viewed as the chief diplomatic and political agent of the United Nations and is "widely respected" for these qualities, which tend to be "all consuming."