Report: U.N. program rife with bribes
United Nations More than half of the companies that traded with Iraq in the pre-war oil for food program paid bribes and kickbacks to the government of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, according to the final report of a U.N. appointed panel investigating corruption in the $64 billion operation.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, chairman of the Independent Inquiry Committee, said the companies made nearly $2 billion in illegal payments. He was to outline his findings in his fifth and final report today.
“The cumulative impact of this is pretty impressive,” Volcker said in an interview. “Somebody should have stood up and said ‘enough.’ But they didn’t, so it ended up being much more controversial than it should have been considering that the main objectives of the program were in a sense achieved.”
The committee will publish the names of about 3,000 companies suspected of paying an illegal surcharge or abusing the program, according to senior investigators. The inclusion of the companies in the report does not amount to evidence of a crime, but does represent a comprehensive account of the companies for which U.N. investigators discovered “some evidence of manipulation one way or another,” said one senior investigator.
U.S., Japan reach agreement on Okinawa
Tokyo Japan and the United States reached a deal Wednesday to consolidate U.S. Marine airborne operations in Okinawa, resolving one of the thorniest issues of their strategic alliance and laying the groundwork for a broader realignment of America’s more than 37,000 troops stationed on Japanese soil.
The plan calls for the relocation of aviation operations from the Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma – located near a densely populated civilian area of Okinawa – to another American base on the island, according to officials from both countries.
“There was a sense of emergency that not reaching agreement on the issue, a central part of the U.S.-Japan relationship, would seriously damage relations,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters.
Anti-terror legislation advances in Britain
London Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government won a crucial parliamentary vote on sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation Wednesday, but faced a further fight over plans to lock up terror suspects for 90 days without charge.
Following a lengthy debate in the House of Commons, lawmakers voted 472-94 to back the Terror Bill.
The main opposition Conservative Party supported the bill, but warned it would seek to block the legislation at a later stage if the government did not rethink some of the proposals.
In the wake of July’s deadly attacks on London’s transit system, the government said it wanted to extend the maximum 14-day detention without charge for terror suspects to three months, outlaw attending terrorist training camps and make it an offense to glorify or encourage terrorism.
The bill also aimed to outlaw preparing for an act of terrorism, publishing or selling of material that incites terrorism and giving or receiving training in terrorist techniques – such as how to spread viruses, place bombs and cause a stampede in a crowd.
Mormon missionaries will leave Venezuela
Caracas, Venezuela The Mormon Church, citing difficulties with the government of President Hugo Chavez in renewing visas or obtaining new ones, said Wednesday it is pulling its foreign missionaries out of Venezuela and reassigning them to other countries.
The decision comes nearly two months after the government said it was temporarily suspending the granting of visas for foreign missionaries and two weeks after Chavez said he was booting U.S.-based New Tribes Mission from the country, accusing it of links to the CIA.
The U.S. Embassy said 219 American Mormon missionaries left the country over the weekend.