UNITED NATIONS – Under pressure from Washington, the independent team probing the oil-for-food program on behalf of Secretary-General Annan will release internal U.N. documents to Congress and the general public this Monday, three weeks earlier than had been expected, according to an official with the investigation.

The surprise move came after threats from Washington to cut off funds for the U.N., which relies on America for 22% of its budget, unless Congressional investigators get a look at the internal U.N. documentation. The U.N. General Assembly last month also quietly passed a resolution calling for the documents to be shared with member states.

The investigation team, led by former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, is expected to publish an interim report on January 31. Until yesterday, the team’s official position was that it would release the internal documents only once that report is out.

But yesterday an official with the team, officially known as the Independent Inquiry Committee into the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, told The New York Sun that the audits prepared by the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services, OIOS, which until now were available only to Mr. Volcker’s investigators, would be released to “anyone who wants it.” The official declined to comment on the surprising timing of the release.

The pressure to release all documentation relevant to oil-for-food has cut across party lines in Washington. Several recent visitors at Mr. Annan’s office, including a personal friend, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, Tom Lantos of California, have called on Mr. Annan to release the documents.

Mr. Lantos was also a co-sponsor, with Henry Hyde, Republican of Illinois, of House legislation that threatened to cut off U.N. funds incrementally as long as internal documents remained unavailable to Congressional investigators.

The administration, including U.N. Ambassador John Danforth, publicly called on Mr. Annan to release all the information to Congress as well. “We look forward for the release of all the documents,” Mr. Danforth’s spokesman, Richard Grenell, told the Sun yesterday.

Yesterday’s decision by Mr. Volcker “is an important act of transparency,” a senior Republican House staff member told the Sun. “We have been informed that none of the [in-house audit] reports contain any bombshells. But we have not seen the reports at this point.”

Until now, the official U.N. position was that after turning all the material over to Mr. Volcker, it is his decision when to release the OIOS audits. Sources in Washington and at the U.N. said yesterday that the pressure might have been behind the latest decision. Some wondered whether it was a preemptive move by Mr. Volcker, perhaps even in accord with Mr. Annan, to allow some leaks to come out before the January 31 release of the official Volcker report.

Thirty-seven audit reports were prepared by the OIOS, which launched an investigation soon after the first allegations of improprieties in the $64 billion program began to appear in the press. The OIOS later dropped its investigation when Mr. Annan, under pressure, named Mr. Volcker to head the independent probe in April 2004.

One of the most interesting documents to Washington investigators is an April 8, 2003, audit on the management of contracts for independent inspection agents in Iraq. Parts of that report were leaked last year in relation to the Swiss company Cotecna, which, as the Sun revealed, continued to pay Mr. Annan’s son, Kojo, long after the U.N. had originally admitted, and up until the beginning of last year, when the oil-for-food program officially dissolved.

One U.N. official familiar with the in-house investigation told the Sun that many of the reports are based on a visit to Iraq by an OIOS auditor. The official claimed, however, that later, when an OIOS investigator wanted to follow up on the auditor’s findings, the American-led coalition refused to grant him an entry visa.