London: Senior United Nations officials have disregarded the findings of the Volcker Committee's probe into the Iraqi oil-for-food programme, the U.S. envoy to the U.N., John Bolton, has said. ``In the bubble on First Avenue, Mr. Volcker is just ignored. I talk about it, but it's a solitary conversation. Nobody else will be fired unless people are indicted by outside authorities,'' Sunday Telegraph quoted Mr. Bolton as saying at a private dinner in New York last week.

``Corruption didn't arise out of thin air it arose out of the culture of the place. Bribes, mismanagement etc... It would be unacceptable for executives in any normal organisation,'' he said.

The Volcker probe, established by Kofi Annan, had criticised the U.N. and the Secretary-General himself for failures in running the programme from which former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein skimmed off an estimated $ 2 billion. Mr. Bolton noted that the U.N. staff could accept gifts worth up to $10,000 in a year without any requirement to disclose them. The U.S. last week said it planned to reduce the $10,000 figure to $250 under rule changes proposed by its new Under-Secretary for Management, Christopher Burnham, a former Bush administration official.

Alleging a prevailing anti-American sentiment among many delegates at the U.N., Mr. Bolton said, ``Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.N. has become the focus for a lot of people who have an agenda against the United States.'' ``We are having the same debates we thought we were having 20 years ago,'' claimed Mr. Bolton.

He cited the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the establishment of an International Criminal Court and targets for overseas aid as ``efforts by many countries to get us to agree to things that we'd never support through the tactic of collective embarrassment.'' Despite his criticisms, Mr. Bolton told his audience that he believed parts of the U.N. ``such as the World Health Organisation and the children's agency UNICEF'' often played a valuable role. He admitted that sometimes the U.N. ``can be an effective instrument of U.S. foreign policy. There are times when it can serve U.S. interests.''

He cited events in the summer of 1990 when the U.N. voted for war against Saddam to force him out of Kuwait before U.S. Congress passed such a resolution. — PTI

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