The communications director for the United Nations inquiry into the Oil-for-Food programme resigned on 24 September 2004, after a Washington think tank publicized an op-ed she had written two years earlier that compared President George W. Bush unfavorably to Osama bin Laden.
Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to lead the independent investigation, said he accepted Anna Di Lellio's departure with "regret." Neither party mentioned the article in their exchange of letters.
The Heritage Foundation had flagged a piece Di Lellio published in The Guardian in 2002, on the first anniversary of the 11 September attacks, in which she criticized Bush, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and what she described as an uncritical media.
The Oil-for-Food programme had allowed Saddam Hussein's government, operating under international sanctions, to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy humanitarian goods. It became the largest aid scheme in UN history before being wound down. An Iraqi newspaper had named more than 200 people suspected of misappropriating funds from oil sales under the programme, prompting Annan to commission the Volcker inquiry.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in September 2004, in its own words.