Iraq on Friday charged that corruption in the now defunct oil-for-food programme began already under the previous U.N. administration of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt. Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Samir Sumaidaie, told reporters that from the beginning in 1996, the programme was executed according to demands from ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Sumaidaie also demanded that the U.N. return to Iraq the 1.4 billion dollars it used for administrative costs during the seven- year humanitarian programme, and the 30 million dollars it has spent on investigating allegations of fraud. His comments followed the release Thursday of a 219-page preliminary report of a probe panel headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, who found a "grave" conflict of interest on the part of Benon Sevan, who headed the U.N.'s oil-for-food programme. "The U.N. secretariat is subject to its own political culture in subverting the will of the U.N. Security Council," said Sumaidaie. "We found that in the early days, the secretariat bent backward to please Saddam Hussein and Boutros Boutros-Ghali tried to please the Saddam Hussein government by accommodating its requests." ---SP 0003 Local Time 2103 GMT
