UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations has been able to confirm only a handful of cases of sexual abuse of local girls by peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the organization’s head of the peacekeeping department said yesterday.

The undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, told The New York Sun yesterday that the U.N.’s investigation could substantiate sexual abuse by only as few as eight peacekeepers so far, despite the fact that as many as 150 complaints have been registered.

The scandal, which was dubbed “sex-for-food” because it involved allegations that U.N. peacekeepers solicited sex from local girls as young as 10-years-old in exchange for money or favors that at times amounted to no more than money for a single meal, has been part of what Secretary-General Annan dubbed the U.N.’s “annus horribilis” in 2004.

The U.N. peacekeeping code of conduct forbids prostitution, but according to Mr. Guehenno, there is a “structural problem with every group with money and power that you insert in a place of extreme poverty,” such as Congo. He said he hoped to soon be able to publish a new code that would tighten the rules and address the problem.

The head of the 11,000-strong blue helmet team in Congo, William Swing, yesterday briefed the Security Council, and although his report dealt mostly with peacekeeping issues, he was peppered with questions about the sex scandal, one diplomat who attended the closed-door meeting said, adding that many question dealt with how the mission intends to deal with troops guilty of sexual abuse.

“We asked that they will be indicted or court-martialed in some system of justice, so they are punished,” an American deputy ambassador, Anne Patterson, told the Sun. “He said that there were several people that have gone to prison, court martial or dismissed. The question is, is that sufficient?”

The Washington Post recently reported on an internal U.N. document that accused peacekeepers from Morocco, Pakistan, and Nepal of seeking to obstruct a U.N. investigation into the scandal in Congo. That report documented 68 cases of alleged rape, prostitution, and pedophilia by peacekeepers, according to the Post.

The U.N.’s investigating arm is due to release its own report “in a few days,” one official told the Sun yesterday. But even that probe was tainted when one man under contract with the U.N. investigating team was caught raping a local young girl in Kisangani. So far the U.N has refused to officially release the name of the man, or any other names and nationalities of peacekeepers implicated in the scandal. According to Mr. Guehenno, there are legal issues involved, including a man’s “right to privacy until proven guilty in a court of law.” Instead, the U.N. prefers to sever its relations with the accused party, in the hope that they would be prosecuted in the nation of their origin, he said.

One U.N. official familiar with peacekeeping operation told the Sun that this might also explain the low number of confirmed cases among so many allegations. “When a contingent commander hears that there are allegations of sexual abuse against one of his troops, he quickly sends him home,” the officials said.