KOFI ANNAN'S DRUG DEALERS

What's this? Another scandal at the United Nations?

Alas, it is so.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is so busy hectoring the United
States and its allies on their supposed moral shortcomings, he cast a
blind eye to the international drug-trafficking operation that was
being run out of his mailroom.

Say this for Annan: On his watch, the United Nations has become an
equal-opportunity corrupter of the first order: Fraud, sleaze and
criminality can be found at all levels, not just the highest ones.

Remember the Oil-for-Food scandal, the multibillion-dollar ripoff that
enriched Saddam Hussein, any number of U.N. officials and other
diplomats - and even Annan's own son?

The drug dealing doesn't approach that level - what
could?

But officials this week busted a ring that's smuggled tons of khat -
an illegal East African stimulant - into this country over the past
year and a half. The stash has a street value of some $10 million, and
the proceeds reportedly helped finance Somali warlords.

In all, 44 people were indicted on federal drug charges (14 remain at
large). Named as one of the four ringleaders was Osman Osman, a Somali
clerk in the U.N. mailroom, where he's worked since 1977.

According to the federal indictment handed down in Manhattan, the ring
used U.N. diplomatic pouches to smuggle the narcotics into the United
States.

All of this comes less than two months after Annan's deputy, Mark
Molloch Brown, publicly blasted the Bush administration for "failing
to stand up for [the U.N.] against its domestic critics." Annan,
needless to say, applauded his aide's remarks.

Maybe, just maybe, all that criticism is justified.

And, this time, could a drug-smuggling scheme operating right in the
heart of the world body possibly be enough to spark efforts at reform,
no matter how modest?

Just maybe?

Nah, never happen.

America's U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, has been one of the most
outspoken in calling for a revamping of the organization's structure -
but Democrats denounce him as a "bully" and vow to block any effort to
reappoint him.

(Just what is it that the Democrats like about the United Nations,
anyway? It's a perplexity.)

Whether it's Oil-for-Food - the biggest economic-political scandal in
history - or the world body's impotence in dealing with terrorist
groups like Hezbollah and rogue regimes like Iran, the United Nations
has earned all the scorn that's been heaped upon it.

And now it's running drugs out of the mailroom.

Back in 1998, the General Assembly issued a lofty political
declaration that established a worldwide "Office on Drugs and Crime"
and pledged to "eliminate or significantly reduce both the demand for
and supply of illegal drugs by 2008."

Wouldn't it be something if copies of that high-minded document were
sent out from the U.N. mailroom in diplomatic pouches that then
carried smuggled drugs back to the United States?

No surprise, though. The United Nations, like Annan himself, knows no
shame.