Annan leaves UN in midst of grand reform

By Tuyet Nguyen and Chris Cermak Dec 14, 2006, 21:36 GMT

New York - As Secretary General Kofi Annan's 10-year tenure comes to an end, in what UN diplomats like to call the most difficult job in the world, he leaves to his successor the completion of the most ambitious reform process in the organization's 60-year history.

Annan, 68, presided over some of the best and worst times at the UN, and has described his activities in the past 15 years as 'very, very tense.'

Annan was shrouded in a cloud of accusations of mismanagement in the oil-for-food programme in Iraq and embarassing sexual misconduct by UN peacekeepers, which tarnished the reputation of the world body in the last few years of his second term.

But he also presided over a series of reforms at the world body, including the creation of a new and improved Human Rights Council and a Peacebuilding Commission to help countries emerge from conflict.

He headed the peacekeeping operations department for five years before assuming the UN leadership in January, 1997, and was re- elected for a second five-year term beginning in 2002.

Annan rejected calls to resign in the wake of the corruption allegations, saying that the massive reform programme of the 60-year- old world body needed a leader and that it would keep him busy until the end of his term. His South Korean successor Ban Ki-moon takes over on New Years Day.

In various interviews, Annan said he had considered resigning after investigators severely criticized his failure to correct wrongdoings by his staff in the oil-for-food scheme and corruption in the UN procurement systems.

But when asked publicly whether he would step down, he replied, 'Hell, no.'

Annan emerged from the oil-for-food investigation unshaken by accusations that the organization erred and covered up its mistakes. Privately, his senior aides said he fired more employees than were reported in the media over a period of many years after internal investigations found violations of UN work ethics.

Annan and the UN shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, which was no small feat for a man who lived in the shadow of secretaries- general during his first 34 years at the organization, only to be suddenly thrown into the limelight that comes with managing international conflicts and diplomacy.

Yet he gained respect for honestly stating the purposes of his leadership, which prompted the UN Security Council in 2001 to re-elect him six months before his first term ended.

   Annan is well liked by the media in general because of his soft manner and simple words. He was also a favourite of New York City's nightly receptions.

He is only the second secretary general to have won the coveted Nobel Peace Prize. Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden received it in 1961 for his efforts to end the civil war in the Congo where he was killed in a plane crash.

   From the beginning when he assumed the UN leadership post in January 1997, Annan travelled the world to urge governments to support the UN and devoted his attention to ending hostilities between Israelis and the Palestinians.

Though he had received strong backing from the US early in his term, he repeatedly clashed with Washington in his final years, denouncing the US-led Iraq invasion in 2003 as illegal and calling for the closure of the detention prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the US is holding suspected terrorists without charge.

The US worked with Annan during the UN reforms to raise the administrative powers of the secretary general's position, which it viewed as the UN leader's key role, rather than that of chief world diplomat.

In 2000, Annan won particular admiration for personally taking on the fight against HIV/AIDS and creating a Global Fund that calls for governments to contribute up to 10 billion dollars a year by 2005 to combat the epidemic on a global scale. The Global Fund actually receives less than the amount asked.

   Under his direction, the UN General Assembly in 2000 adopted an ambitious plan called Millennium Development Goals, under which heads of state and government agreed to meet targets in reducing poverty and HIV/AIDS, provide education to all young children and health care to women and children, and fight gender discrimination.

   Annan forcefully endorsed military intervention to prevent humanitarian disasters, in part due to a personal feeling of regret for not having prevented the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, which occurred in the midst of his leadership of peacekeeping operations.

'Of all my aims as secretary general, there is none to which I feel more deeply committed than that of enabling the UN never again to fail in protecting a civilian population from genocide or mass slaughter,' Annan said after an UN inquiry found the UN had ignored signs of a coming massacre and even reduced troops when kllings began.

In recent months he chastised the international community, and the newly-created Human Rights Council, for neglecting the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, which has killed nearly 300,000 people to date.

   Annan was born in Ghana on April 8, 1938 and went to study at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

He first joined the United Nations in 1962 as an administrative and budget officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva and went on to other assignments in the UN system. He was the first secretary general to emerge from the ranks of the organization itself, a situation that put him closer to UN staffers around the world.

'When I leave the job I hope I will engage in an activity that will give me balance between reflection and action, and give me some time for myself,' he told reporters in his native Ghana in 2004, adding that becoming a farmer is not a bad idea.