The sonorous voice is familiar around the world. no matter what the crisis of the day, Kofi Annan's soft baritone always manages to convey a sense of imperturbable gravitas. Yet his calm must have been sorely tested last week when the U.N. Secretary-General learned more about the latest trouble lapping at his door. Annan had gathered a few top aides at a private site to discuss the scandal over the U.N.'s management of the oil-for-food program during the reign of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. In the middle of the discussion, a staff member's cell phone rang with unsettling news: another story was about to break, this one about suspicious payments to Annan's son Kojo from the Swiss company Cotec-na Inspection S.A., which won an oil-for-food contract in 1998. Annan, a man famously immune to anger, allowed "a look of surprise and dismay to cross his face," says someone who was there, "and his jaw started clenching and unclenching. Then he said very quietly, 'Let's get on with the agenda.'" On Nov. 29, speaking to reporters a few days after the revelations about his son started pouring out, he addressed the mess with his characteristic cool: "Naturally, I was very disappointed and surprised. I understand the perception problem for the U.N., the perception of conflict of interest and wrongdoing."
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