Jesus H. Christ, these people are belligerent little bastards. They're trying to replace Kofi Annan with what - someone who's more in line with Bush's vision for his own U.N.? Please. The world is going to tell our jerks to shut up in one way or another someday - and it looks like that day might be coming soon. It's hard for anyone to accept being called a fraud by another fraud.
Bush declines to back beleaguered Annan
George Bush pointedly declined to support the United Nations secretary general yesterday after the head of a Senate committee investigating multibillion-dollar abuse of a UN programme in Iraq called for Kofi Annan's resignation.
President Bush called for a "full and open" accounting of the oil-for-food programme, under investigation by five congressional committees and a separate UN inquiry. According to Norm Coleman, the US senator who demanded Mr Annan's resignation on Wednesday, Saddam Hussein illegally diverted $21bn.
Mr Coleman, the Republican head of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said Mr Annan should resign because "the most extensive fraud in the history of the UN occurred on his watch".
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Britain, France, China and Russia, expressed support for Mr Annan yesterday, but the US pays a quarter of the UN's budget and could make life difficult for the Ghanaian secretary general - as it did for his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom it refused to back for a second term. "They are pounding the UN. They are pounding Kofi. It's worse than under Boutros, and that's saying something," said a senior UN official yesterday.
