UNITED NATIONS – Under the guise of aiding General Assembly negotiations on reform, Secretary-General Annan rushed back to Turtle Bay yesterday, interrupting his end-of-summer vacation. But his two-day New York appearance was largely dedicated to meeting with oil-for-food investigators.

Mr. Annan told reporters that he will meet today with the staff of a committee headed by Paul Volcker, which is expected to release a comprehensive report next week on the management of the United Nations during the oil-for-food fiasco. The Volcker report, due for release next Wednesday or Thursday, is looming large over a mid-September summit of more that 170 heads of state, which was called by Mr. Annan to help reform the world body.

“I’m here for the reform of the U.N. and discussions with the member states,” Mr. Annan said yesterday, acknowledging that he may speak with Volcker committee members. On Tuesday, his spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, told reporters that he had interrupted his vacation “to take stock of progress towards the 2005 World Summit and to support the president of the General Assembly in his efforts to ensure a successful summit.” Ms. Okabe said that Mr. Annan is expected to return to Britain, where he had been vacationing, this weekend.

Mr. Annan yesterday sat in on a meeting of a core group of 50 countries trying to gel reform ideas into a cohesive “outcome document,” which would serve as a blueprint for the September 14-16 summit. “He gave, I think, a very strong statement this morning in support of management reforms, and I think that was very helpful,” the American ambassador, John Bolton, told The New York Sun.

Agreement on the document is not imminent, however. “I am telling people, loosen your ties, fire up the coffee pots, get ready for the weekend, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Mr. Bolton said after Americans, Russians, and others challenged its provisions.

Aides to Mr. Annan are far more concerned about next week’s Volcker report, and the possibility that it could overshadow the summit, than they are about the core group’s outcome document, which, according to several diplomats who asked for anonymity during the ongoing negotiations, has slim chances of coming together and may be replaced by a short statement of principles.

Separately, the Associated Press yesterday reported that nine U.N. agencies under investigation by the Volcker committee have agreed to return to Iraq $40 million that they received but have not yet spent as part of the oil-for-food program. A spokesman for the Volcker committee, Michael Holtzman, told the Sun that while the committee is “glad” that the agencies decided to return squandered funds in anticipation of next week’s report, they are still short. The unused sum “is closer to $50 million,” he said.

Meanwhile the United Nations Development Program acknowledged that it is investigating a long-running fraud in its Moscow office, where the sum of $1.2 million was stolen between 2000 and 2004. According to the Moscow Times, which first reported on the theft, “A group of staff members stole funds by forging contracts, tender documents, invoices, and payment orders.”