Annan To Hold Talks in D.C.; U.N. Workers Meet With Legislators

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Annan is scheduled to go to Washington today, but alongside the positive image of his appearance next to supportive Bush administration officials will be a congressional hearing that might add to an atmosphere in which the U.N. has become a partisan wedge issue.

As Mr. Annan meets outgoing Secretary of State Powell and his presumed successor, Condoleezza Rice, a group of U.N. employees and their lawyers will meet with legislators to alert them to a growing lack of U.N. transparency. Transparency and corruption-related issues have led Congress in the past to cut funds to the organization, where America is responsible for 22% of the budget.

The employees, Andrew Thomson and Heidi Postlewait, are two of three co-authors of "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, "a book that has been optioned for a Miramax TV series modeled after the 1970s hit MASH. Mr. Thomson has recently been informed that his U.N. contract will not be renewed after it expires at the end of 2004. Yesterday, after a meeting with management, he was told the employment termination stands.

"This is not about us," Ms. Postlewait, who has a year-and-a-half left on her own U.N. contract, told The New York Sun yesterday, arguing that the contract termination was meant by the U.N. management to create a chilling effect on other staffers.

"Who would come forward on oil-for-food, or sex-for-food, if Andrew gets fired?" she said, referring, respectively, to allegations of wrongdoing in the Iraq humanitarian program and of allegations of the rape of girls as young as 12 years old by 150 men affiliated with a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo.

Andre Sirois, a Canadian lawyer and a former U.N. employee who has represented U.N staffers and now represents the authors, said that at least five or six U.N. employees have asked for his advice recently about exposing oil-for-food details that, he claimed, "would make front-page" news. He said he had advised them not to come forward if they intended to keep their jobs. Staffers have talked about an atmosphere of intimidation, and the staff union recently approved a resolution of "no confidence" in Mr. Annan's senior management.

Mr. Thomson's case will be relayed to legislators on Capitol Hill to put pressure on the U.N. "to take the next step" in reforming, said Tom Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington based group specializing in whistle blower protection.

Ironically, Mr. Devine mentioned Senator Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, as one of the legislators who would participate in the hearings and who had a long record of fighting for whistle-blower rights "regardless of politics." Following House member Lantos and Senator Kennedy, Mr. Leahy yesterday became the third Democratic legislator to visit Mr. Annan in a show of solidarity with the beleaguered secretary-general.

Taking a position on the U.N. "has a potential of becoming a wedge issue" in Washington, Mr. Leahy told the Sun yesterday. "I think it would be unfortunate." He noted that as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, he had fought along the years for the renewal of American payments to the U.N., a big issue in the 1980s and 1990s.

"I just want to make sure that this doesn't suddenly get out of control," Mr. Leahy said, referring to renewed calls for legislation that would cut American U.N. funding. "With all its imperfections, the U.N. is a lot better than not having the U.N.," and America is much better off being an "active member," he said.

This is also shaping up to be the administration's position, after outgoing Ambassador Danforth said last week that he supports the continuation of Mr. Annan's tenure and praised his personal integrity.

But House member Garrett, a Republican of New Jersey, who is one of those who had called for Mr. Annan's resignation, told the Sun that legislation threatening withholding of some funding is meant to assure "accountability of the entire U.N., not only Mr. Annan."

Mr. Annan's son, Kojo, talked to CNN recently in the first interview since his name re-emerged when the Sun revealed that Swiss-based Cotecna had him on its payroll for the period shortly before it won a U.N. contract in 1998 until shortly after the oil-for-food program was terminated earlier this year.

"I have never participated directly or indirectly in any business related to the United Nations," Kojo Annan told CNN. But Fox News revealed yesterday that in September 1998 he registered in a Durban, South Africa, Holiday Inn hotel as "K. Annan, U.N."