United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday he expected to face blame over the Iraqi oil-for-food programme when investigators deliver a report this week, and wished the United Nations had never agreed to run it.

Annan told the BBC World Service he believed chief investigator Paul Volcker would also criticize others involved in the corruption-tainted US$64 billion programme.

"I suspect that there will be lots of criticism (for) myself as chief admin officer, probably something on the 661 committee, the Security Council, the government of Iraq," he said.

"When it comes to Iraq, on this issue no one is entirely covered in glory."

The now defunct programme was designed to ship humanitarian supplies into Iraq while allowing Baghdad to sell limited oil under UN economic sanctions.

It was run by the United Nations and overseen by a panel of Security Council member representatives, called the 661 committee after a resolution governing the sanctions.

Volcker, a former US Federal Reserve chairman hired to investigate the programme, is due to issue a report of more than 1,000 pages today on the investigation's findings.

Among those expected to face criticism are Annan's son Kojo, accused of using his father's name for personal profit while working for a Swiss firm that won a lucrative contract to inspect goods.

Annan is expected to be cleared of improperly interfering in the contract on his son's behalf, although sources close to the investigation say he will be rebuked for failing to supervise the programme properly.

Annan said he wished the UN had had nothing to do with the programme.

"We have a whole range of activities, oil-for-food was an extra programme we were asked to undertake. Honestly I wish we were never given that programme, and I wish the UN would never be asked to take that kind of a programme again," he said.

However, the Independent Inquiry Committee's final report will say the programme succeeded in providing minimal standards of nutrition and health care for millions of Iraqis trying to cope with tough UN sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It also helped the international effort to deprive Saddam of weapons of mass destruction, it said.

"Those were real accomplishments. They were achieved despite uncertain, wavering direction from the Security Council, pressures from competing political forces in Iraq, and endemic corruption on the ground," said a draft forward to the report. "Sadly, those successes fell under an increasingly dark shadow."

While the forward is critical of UN management, and by extension Annan, its overall tone toward him is not entirely critical. Volcker wrote UN secretary-generals are not chosen for management skills and they do not have the tools for strong executive oversight.

Instead, the secretary-general becomes the world's diplomat-in-chief who must navigate the demands and desires of 191 member states.

"The present secretary-general is widely respected for precisely those qualities," Volcker wrote. "In these turbulent times those responsibilities tend to be all-consuming. The record amply reflects consequent administrative failings."

The oil-for-food programme was designed to lessen the humanitarian impact on Iraqis of UN sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. It gave UN officials the power to oversee billions of dollars in trade every year.

The programme ran from 1996 until US-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and toppled President Saddam Hussein.

Source: China Daily