Annan will serve out full term, top aide says

UNITED NATIONS - Beleaguered UN chief Kofi Annan will serve out his final two years in office, and his early departure would be widely viewed as a "political assassination," his new chief of staff said today.

Mark Malloch Brown, himself under fire from staff for a wave of top personnel changes and some botched early moves, also defended his own performance since moving into Annan's office from the UN Development Programme in early January.

"Inevitably we are just in the phase where people have seen trees coming down. But they haven't seen new trees planted. So I think there is an inevitable sort of lag in expectations," Malloch Brown told reporters.

"But I am feeling very relaxed. I think things are where we want them to be," he said. "Clearly I am expecting him (Annan) to finish his term and I think it would be a catastrophe for the legitimacy of the UN if he did not.

"It would be viewed as a political assassination if he left and would just completely divide the UN membership and be a staggering blow to the stature and the independence of the institution," he said.

The United Nations and Annan, whose second five-year term ends in December 2006, have been criticized for mismanagement of the oil-for-food programme for Iraq and allegations of sex abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Congo and elsewhere.

Numerous US congressional committees are looking into various allegations of wrongdoing and some conservative lawmakers have called for Annan's resignation.

Malloch Brown was brought in by Annan to clean up the world body's image, institute management reforms and reshuffle senior staff.

But UN staff are grumbling over the growing tide of changes and the slow pace of following up on allegations against some top managers.

In perhaps the most high-profile personnel case, UN refugee chief Ruud Lubbers, accused of sexual harassment, resigned on February 20 after insisting two days earlier that he would not quit and that Annan had not asked him to do so.

An internal UN probe found grounds for disciplining him but Annan let him off with a scolding, only to crack down later after the investigation findings were leaked to the press.

In another embarrassment to Annan, developing nations this week delayed his appointment of Thai economist Supachai Panitchpakdi to head the UN Conference on Trade and Development, objecting to his earlier work as director-general of the World Trade Organisation.

Malloch Brown said that appointment was made before he became chief of staff.

In other top job shifts, chief spokesman Fred Eckhard is stepping down in June, top internal watchdog Dileep Nair is being investigated for alleged misconduct and political affairs chief Kieran Prendergast is expected to leave in mid-year, according to diplomats.

Annan has come under attack primarily over the US$67 billion ($92 billion) oil-for-food programme, set up to allow Iraq to sell oil to buy civilian goods to ease the impact on ordinary Iraqis of UN sanctions imposed after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

An independent commission led by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has accused the head of the now-defunct programme, which was shut down last year, of a grave conflict of interest for soliciting an oil allocation from Baghdad that he passed on to a small Panama-registered firm.

- REUTERS