US voices doubts on Annan's future at UN

The Bush administration said yesterday UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan may have been too hasty to claim he had been exonerated in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal and would not rule out his eventual resignation.

"It is probably an exaggeration to suggest that the Volcker report exonerated the secretary-general," said US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Lagon, referring to an independent inquiry led by Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve chairman.

On Mr Annan's eventual resignation, Mr Lagon said, "We haven't made the decision it couldn't happen. It's not ripe."

The Bush administration has been careful not to call for the resignation of Mr Annan since the oil-for-food probe began last year. Mr Lagon's comments were the first time the United States has hinted that this might be the case.

The US official, the deputy head of the State Department office for international organisations, which includes the United Nations, was speaking to a small group of reporters.

Mr Lagon said the State Department was looking into reports that two investigators from the Volcker inquiry had resigned in protest that the panel's findings had been too soft on Mr Annan.

"It appears that two people who had a hand in forming that report think that even what the report said is perhaps a little too charitable about the secretary-general and his leadership," Mr Lagon said.

A spokesman for the Volcker committee sidestepped queries, saying only that the two had resigned after completing the work they had signed on to do.

The panel's latest report, issued on March 29, concluded that Mr Annan did not influence the award of a UN contract to a firm that employed his son but it faulted him for conducting a superficial probe of the controversy.

"Hell no!" Mr Annan told a news conference when asked if he would resign as a result of the report, as some US lawmakers had demanded.

"After so many distressing and untrue allegations have been made against me, this exoneration by the independent inquiry obviously comes as a great relief," Mr Annan said at the time.

The oil-for-food programme was set up to help ordinary Iraqis cope with UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.