New York’s State Senate and the Bloomberg administration have lined up along opposite sides of United Nations building expansion, but neither position has earned the support of mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, who yesterday joined a growing group of local and national politicians and publications calling on Secretary-General Annan to resign.

“They’re both wrong” about the U.N.’s plan to erect a new building in part of what is now Robert Moses Park, he said. Mr. Ferrer – who served as the Bronx borough president and a member of the City Council before joining the Drum Major Institute, a public-policy think tank – is the only Democrat who polls ahead of Mr. Bloomberg in a head-to-head mayoral contest. Mr. Ferrer told The New York Sun yesterday that while he believes, along with Mr. Bloomberg and other proponents of U.N. expansion, that the development would be “very good economically” for New York, he added, “Whether the U.N. needs our financial assistance to get this done is another question.”

The United Nations Development Corporation, which would be responsible for the new 35-story building to be added to the U.N.’s Manhattan holdings, is a state-created public authority. As part of the expansion legislation that the state Senate refused to consider last week, the UNDC would have issued about $600 million in bonds to pay for the project, but without any provision for review by the Public Authorities Control Board. In announcing the state Senate’s decision, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said he did not want state or city taxpayers to shoulder the cost if the United Nations defaulted on the bonds’ debt service.

Mr. Ferrer agreed in wanting to shield city taxpayers, saying, “I don’t think the city should be giving [the United Nations] any gifts, either in loans or land.”

He said: “The oil-for-food scandal has made clear that they don’t need our money – some are stealing enough to fund this as it is…[oil-for-food] is a scandal that is an outrage, an absolute outrage. I think that for the secretary-general to say, ‘I can’t control my own son’… give me a break! That’s not an answer. If he can’t get hold of this scandal – which emanates from a member of his own family – then [Kofi Annan] should resign. This is just a plain flat-out case of stealing on a very grand scale.”

Mr. Ferrer was referring to disclosures that Saddam Hussein’s government raised more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue by subverting U.N. sanctions and the oil-for-food program. Mr. Annan’s son, Kojo, it was disclosed by the Sun, received payments as recently as early this year from Cotecna Inspection Services SA, a firm that had a contract with the U.N. to monitor goods arriving in Iraq.

Mr. Ferrer also denounced the U.N.’s behavior toward New York City, saying, “Given that diplomats routinely run up parking and other bills in this city, we have a strong argument that the diplomats are recidivist deadbeats.”

Despite these criticisms, Mr. Ferrer opposed Council Member Simcha Felder’s plan to introduce legislation that would withhold any city assistance to the United Nations, saying, “I don’t think I buy that.”

On Sunday, another mayoral candidate – Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from Brooklyn – told the Sun that he “agreed with the state senators’ apprehension about extending any benefits at all to the U.N.”

At the national level, the movement to discipline the U.N. gained strength yesterday, as more of Mr. Weiner’s colleagues in the House expressed support for a bill that would withhold American funding to the U.N. and call for Mr. Annan to step down.

Rep. Tim Murphy, a Republican of Pennsylvania, identified Mr. Annan as someone who presided over “the largest scandal ever to hit the U.N., someone whose son continued to receive thousands of dollars a year” as kickbacks from oil-for-food. “If Kofi Annan is innocent,” Mr. Murphy added, “he has nothing to fear by opening up all of the books.”

The Pennsylvania congressman serves on the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, one of the House committees investigating oil-for-food. He told the Sun yesterday that when his committee learned that the U.N. would not release its records to American investigators in the House and Senate, “that was infuriating.”

He was especially critical of the countries now backing Mr. Annan that opposed American action in Iraq, saying, “It seems like anyone who opposed U.S. and coalition involvement in Iraq has been up to their own neck in this scandal – the Russians, the French, the Chinese. Publicly they were saying they wanted to use sanctions to block Iraq’s development of weapons; privately they were stuffing their own pockets on the way.”

Joining Mr. Murphy’s condemnation was Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican of Indiana, who serves on the national-security subcommittee with Mr. Murphy. “Kofi Annan is responsible for us not getting the documents – he’s the boss. If he said, ‘Release the documents,’ they’d be released, and the world would know what happened.

“If he were a corporate president, he’d probably be removed from his position and probably indicted. Look what happened to WorldCom and those other companies – and this guy is in charge of the world body?” Mr. Burton said.

Mr. Burton also questioned the effectiveness of the U.N.’s own investigation into oil-for-food, saying that while he thinks Paul Volcker, who is in charge of the investigation, is an “honorable man,” Mr. Volcker “does not have subpoena power to get the documents…but he can’t do the job without the documents.”

Some of these calls for Mr. Annan’s resignation came in response to a weekend statement by Rep. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, announcing that he would introduce a nonbinding House resolution urging that Mr. Annan remove himself.

“There needs to be an accounting of what happened to the billions of dollars in the oil-for-food program and whether U.N. officials may have been complicit in helping Saddam Hussein subvert international law,” Mr. Wicker said in the statement. “I do not think that is possible as long as Mr. Annan remains as secretary-general,” he added.

Mr. Murphy is a co-sponsor of Mr. Wicker’s legislation, and Mr. Burton said that he “sure will” support it, adding, “In fact, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.”

As American pressure on the U.N. increased yesterday, it was also stepped up at the international level, as China – in a move apart from its previous statements of support for the secretary-general – issued a statement calling for the oil-for-food scandal to be resolved quickly.

“China hopes the U.N. inquiry team will find out the truth through a just, independent, objective and transparent investigation,” a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue, told Agence France-Presse yesterday.

Also yesterday, the National Post of Canada joined a growing list of American publications in calling for the secretary-general’s resignation.

ANNAN WATCH

The following is a list of politicians and press outlets that have called for Secretary-General Annan to resign:

The New York Sun
The New Republic
National Review
William Safire (N.Y. Times columnist)
New York Post
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The Montana News
Las Vegas Review-Journal
National Post (Canada)
The Times (London)
Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota
Senator John Ensign of Nevada
Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama
Rep. Vito Fossella of New York
Rep. Peter King of New York
Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey
Rep. Roger Wicker of Mississippi
Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania
Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana
Fernando Ferrer