Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Just a month ago Kofi Annan proclaimed that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing in the Iraq Oil-for-Food program:

Cotecna won a large UN contract to inspect the oil-for-food programme in January 1999, while Kojo Annan worked for the firm in Africa.

Kofi Annan has insisted he did not know about the firm's bid for the contract and today's report said there was no evidence the bid "was subject to any affirmative or improper influence of the secretary general in the bidding or selection process".

The investigators, identified as Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan, felt the Independent Inquiry Committee played down findings critical of Mr. Annan in an interim report in late March related to his son, Kojo Annan, according to Mark Pieth, one of three leaders of the committee.

The committee "told the story" that the investigators presented, "but we made different conclusions than they would have," Mr. Pieth said. "You follow a trail and you want to see people pick it up," he said of the investigators who left.

In an interview aired yesterday with Fox News, Mr. Volcker took direct issue with Mr. Annan's insistence that he had been exonerated by investigators probing both his role in overseeing the Iraq aid program and conflicts of interest involving a key contract awarded to a Swiss firm that employed Mr. Annan's son.

"I thought we criticized [Mr. Annan] rather severely," Mr. Volcker said of his panel's interim report, released March 29. "I would not call that an exoneration."

Asked point-blank whether Mr. Annan had been cleared of wrongdoing in the $10 billion scandal, Mr. Volcker replied, "No."