WHY MR ANNAN SHOULD RESIGN

There's been a lot of debate after the revelations of the huge corruption scandal in the oil-for-food programme on whether Mr Annan should resign or not. To find the answer for that we'll need to wait for the investigations - both the UN internal investigation and the one commited by the US Congress - to tell us what he knew of this.

However, Mr Annan should resign anyway, for a reason that has nothing to do with oil whatsoever. Kenneth L Cain, who served in the UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and Liberia, writes in the Wall Street Journal about the UN's betrayal to those who depended on their protection, and of Mr Annan's direct resposibility for it. When given information of the coming genocide in Rwanda Mr Annan explicitly denied the request from the force commander General Romeo Dellaire, to act in order to prevent the massacre. The same thing happened again in Srebrenica. And Mr Cain is not alone in this view. Per Ahlmark has written brilliantly about it in his latest book, "Det är demokratin, dumbom!" (It's the democracy, stupid! - unfortunatly not availible in English to my knowledge).

Mr Annan should resign. Not beacuse of the oil-for-food scandal (though that may also be cause to call for his resignation - we'll find out). He should resign because he put his own career in the United Nations ahead of the lives of the hundreds of thousands who were massacred in Rwanda.

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