UN: The resignation of two members of the independent commission investigating corruption in the UN's oil-for-food programme has raised new questions about the credibility of UN secretary general Kofi Annan.
The head of the commission, Paul Volcker, has also challenged Mr Annan's claim that he had been exonerated of wrongdoing in his interim report last month.
"I thought we criticised him rather severely, I would not call that an exoneration," Mr Volcker told Fox News yesterday.
The Bush administration has also for the first time challenged Mr Annan's statement in March, when he said that "this exoneration by the independent inquiry obviously comes as a great relief".
It was "probably an exaggeration" to suggest that the Volcker report exonerated the secretary general, said US deputy assistant secretary of state Mark Lagon, in a briefing last week.
Robert Parton, one of the chief investigators on the commission, said he resigned, along with colleague Miranda Duncan, "on principle" because the report was too soft on Mr Annan.
The report said there was "not sufficient evidence" that Mr Annan had tried to influence a multimillion-dollar UN contract given to Cotecna, the Swiss company that employed his son Kojo.
It found, however, that Mr Annan's then top aide had shredded three years of internal documents, starting on the day after Mr Volcker's commission was authorised and that Kojo Annan ostensibly left the company but continued to receive hidden payments for years.
"When he found out that his son was employed by Cotecna, and continued to be employed, there was no real investigation," Mr Volcker told Fox.
The oil-for-food programme was created to provide humanitarian supplies to Iraqis faced with crippling UN sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Mr Parton, a former FBI agent, was the senior counsel responsible for inquiring into the procurement of companies under the programme.
He was also the lead investigator into allegations of impropriety relating to Kofi Annan and Kojo Annan.
He claimed through a friend that the final version of the interim report left out material facts and that he was upset with the conclusions.
A spokesman for the committee that drew up the report accused Mr Parton, whose resignation was reported last week, of trying to expand his mandate.
"It is the responsibility of investigators only to gather facts and bring them to the committee, not to provide opinion," Mike Holtzman said. "It is the committee that renders judgment on the facts and to put it bluntly, the investigators were not paid for their opinions."
Mr Volcker said yesterday he could ask for more time and money to keep investigating the allegations of fraud and corruption.
He also disclosed that the inquiry was "still wide open" regarding Benon Sevan, the Cypriot national who headed the oil-for-food programme and who was found to have steered Iraqi oil contracts to an acquaintance.
Meanwhile, Mr Annan has complained to UN staff that Saddam Hussein made most of his money "on the American and British watch" rather than from the oil-for-food programme. He told an internal meeting that the former Iraqi leader took more money from oil sales to Jordan and Turkey, which were being monitored by the US and Britain.
Despite the breach of sanctions, they turned a blind eye to the smuggling to Turkey and Jordan "because they were allies", Mr Annan suggested.