Annan: US, UK Also Bear Blame in Oil, Food Scandal

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday the United States and Britain bore part of the blame in the Iraq oil-for-food debacle by allowing unsupervised oil exports that Saddam Hussein exploited. Annan, addressing a seminar on the United Nations and the media, said most of the money Saddam earned was by oil sold to Jordan and Turkey outside of the $67 billion U.N. program. Only countries like the United States and Britain had interdiction forces that could have stopped it. But he said they "decided to close their eyes to Turkey and Jordan because they are allies." As Annan was speaking, U.S. federal prosecutors in New York charged several people, including a Texas businessman, with paying kickbacks in exchange for oil allocations.

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