UNITED NATIONS – Secretary-General Annan yesterday refused to apologize publicly to an employee he had fired earlier this year, Joseph Stephanides, rejecting a recommendation by an internal committee. Last week, the committee said Mr. Stephanides, the only U.N. official to be punished by the United Nations in the aftermath of the oil-for-food scandal, should be compensated financially for the damage to his reputation.

In a letter to Mr. Stephanides, Undersecretary General for Management Christopher Burnham wrote on Mr. Annan’s behalf that the secretary-general does “not share” the unanimous opinion of the three-person internal disciplinary committee. Specifically, Mr. Annan disagreed that the decision to terminate Mr. Stephanides’s employment was “seriously flawed.

Nevertheless, “in light of the circumstances,” and “on the principal of proportionality,” Mr. Annan said he would rescind his last February decision to summarily fire Mr. Stephanides, according to the letter.

Mr. Stephanides plans to appeal Mr. Annan’s ruling, but the appeal process, according to U.N officials, normally takes a year. “It is more like two years,” Mr. Stephanides’s attorney, George Irving, told The New York Sun. Mr. Annan’s tenure officially ends in December 2006. By that time, “They know it will be forgotten,” Mr. Irving said.

Mr. Stephanides’s name appeared in a February interim report of the Volcker committee. A liaison between Mr. Annan’s office and the U.N. Security Council, Mr. Stephanides was accused of leaking information about a bidding process to a British goods-inspection company, Lloyd’s Register. After Mr. Volcker published his findings, Mr. Stephanides was summarily fired, just short of his retirement.

The committee that reviewed his case found that Mr. Annan failed to take into account Mr. Stephanides’s 35-year “unblemished record” in firing him, and that the secretary-general’s actions were motivated by “political considerations and expediencies.” The United Nations attempted “to give the impression to the world that concrete and decisive action was being taken,” the committee said in a statement. The committee therefore “sympathized” with Mr. Stephanides’s argument that he was used as a “sacrificial lamb.”

It also said that by the time Mr. Stephanides made the disclosure to Lloyd’s, the information he passed along already “became public,” and that he had done so on behalf of the Security Council. The evidence, it added, supports Mr. Stephanides’s claim that he understood that his higher-ups at the United Nations also supported his actions.

Still, Mr. Annan informed Mr. Stephanides in yesterday’s letter that he “violated procurement rules.” The United Nations will therefore not accept the committee’s recommendations to compensate him with a sum equal two years’ salary. Mr. Annan also rejected the recommendation to fully exonerate Mr. Stephanides. He refused the committee’s unprecedented recommendation that Mr. Annan “provide a written apology” to Mr. Stephanides, “which should also be published by the media.”