UNSCAM UPDATE:

The sense of an organisation unwilling to acknowledge the nasty realities of a changed world has been much in evidence this week after the publication of the first of Paul Volcker’s reports on the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

Mr Volcker, the 77-year-old former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and no enemy of the UN, stated: “We are not here to tear down, we are here to restore.”

Whether that is possible has become the crucial question. With the US television networks and senior congressional figures feasting on the detail of the report yesterday, there was a sense that the inquiry may be getting out of hand.

This week’s interim report was commissioned after detailed allegations surfaced following the 2003 Iraq war suggesting that Saddam Hussein’s regime had perverted the UN-run scheme by raking off cash that should have gone to Iraq’s sick and starving.

An estimated $1.7 billion (£900 million) was skimmed off the $64 billion programme and used by the Iraqis to win favours from 270 influential figures abroad.

As the report drily noted: “It is evident that the Iraqi regime attempted to gain favour by granting oil allocations to persons the programme did not recognise as oil purchasers.”

Read the whole thing. And read this, too.

UPDATE: Fingers are pointing every which way:

LONDON (Reuters) – Former U.N. head Boutros Boutros-Ghali refused to take all the blame for Iraq’s scandal-tainted oil-for-food program on Saturday, pointing the finger at his successor Kofi Annan.

Heh.