Another Kofi Memo!

[Annie]

He may actually be on the way out!

On the first memo:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?p=294099#post294099

Here's the story on the second:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050615/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_oil_for_food

There's a cute pic of Kofi and Jacques too!

...The second, from the same Cotecna executive, expresses confidence that the company would get the bid because of "effective but quiet lobbying" in New York diplomatic circles.

The previously unknown e-mails will be a new distraction for the U.N. secretary-general, who had claimed he was exonerated by an interim report released in March by the Independent Inquiry Committee, chaired by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Anna and had hoped that the committee was finished investigating his personal involvement.

If accurate, the new details would cast doubt on a major finding the U.N.-backed committee made in March — that there wasn't enough evidence to show that Annan knew about efforts by Cotecna, which employed his son Kojo, to win the Iraq oil-for-food contract. The Associated Press obtained the e-mails Tuesday.

Through his spokesman, Annan said he didn't remember the late 1998 meeting. He repeatedly has insisted that he didn't know Cotecna was pursuing a contract with the oil-for-food program.

The $64 billion oil-for-food program was aimed at helping ordinary Iraqis suffering under U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, but it has become the target of several corruption investigations since the Iraqi leader was ousted.

A key issue has been whether Annan was guilty of a conflict of interest because the United Nations awarded the $10 million-a-year contract to Cotecna while Kojo Annan was a consultant for the company.

In the interim report in March, Volcker's committee accused Cotecna and Kojo Annan of trying to conceal their relationship after the firm won the contract. It said Kofi Annan didn't properly investigate possible conflicts of interest but cleared him of trying to influence the contract or violating U.N. rules.

In a statement, the committee said it was "urgently reviewing" the two e-mails, which it received from Cotecna on Monday night.

"Does this raise a question? Sure," said Reid Morden, executive director of the probe.

Morden said investigators had planned to interview Annan soon as part of its investigation into management of oil-for-food. "This certainly adds another topic," he said of the Cotecna e-mails....