THIS IS THE FULL HALF AN HOUR TRANSCRIPT

A Lyse Doucet interview with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, for the BBC World Service and BBC World Television.

LYSE DOUCET: Kofi Annan, welcome to the programme.

KOFI ANNAN: Thank you very much.

DOUCET: What a ten years it has been for you, a real rollercoaster, from the high of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, to the low of the Oil-for-Food scandal that tarnished you personally. You must feel it's time to go?

ANNAN It's been an interesting decade, lots of interesting things have been, as you said, high and low, but on the whole I think we've managed to press ahead with our programme and I hope the UN is in better shape today than it was ten years ago. Personally, I can say that despite all the difficulties I think it's been worthwhile and I'm glad I had the privilege and the opportunity to serve.

DOUCET: Was the invasion of Iraq in 2003, without a Security Council resolution, the most difficult point for you in your term?

ANNAN It was extremely difficult, because I really believed that we could have stopped the war and that if we had worked a bit harder, given the inspectors a bit more time, we could have. I was also concerned that for the US and its coalition to go to war without the consent of the Council in that particular region, which has always been extremely controversial, would be extremely difficult and very divisive and that it would take quite a long time to put the organisation back together, and of course it divided the world too. It's healing but we are not there yet, it hasn't healed yet, and we feel the tension still in this organisation as a result of that.

DOUCET: And you watch with mounting alarm, like many people, what's happening. In September, you said Iraq was in danger of sliding towards civil war.

ANNAN Civil war, yeah.

DOUCET: A few days ago, you said it was almost civil war.

ANNAN Yeah.

DOUCET: Is it civil war?

ANNAN It is an extremely dangerous situation and I think we all are interested in getting Iraq right and we would want to get it right, but the Iraqis will have to come together and make it happen. Obviously, they are going to need help, given the killings and the bitterness I'm not sure they can do it alone. They would need help from the international community and their neighbours, but some of the key things they have to do is the constitutional review, really looking at issues of revenue sharing - oil and taxation revenues, how do you share it fairly amongst the three groups, or four groups? How do you share power? I mean, all the struggle is about each group's position in future Iraq, and if you don't deal with those issues, which during the constitution were swept under the rug, they are going to face very serious problems and I think they should be tackled.

DOUCET: Is it civil war?

ANNAN I think, given the level of violence, the level of killing and bitterness and the way that forces are arranged against each other. Look at a few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war; this is much worse.

DOUCET:
You must in some way feel sadly vindicated - in 2003, in March, you said that, "A war can lead to unintended consequences, producing new threats and new dangers."

ANNAN Yes, you know - I don't know if I feel vindicated. It is sad - it is sad in the sense that it had to come to this.

DOUCET:
Was it a mistake? Some Iraqis say that life is worse than it was under a dictator.

ANNAN I think they are right in the sense of the average Iraqi's life. If I were an average Iraqi obviously I would make the same comparison, that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, "Am I going to see my child again?" And the Iraqi government has not been able to bring the violence under control. The society needs security and a secure environment for it to get on - without security not much can be done - not recovery or reconstruction.

DOUCET: Do you believe that the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, which is about to publish its report, is a recognition that the US and others have to change course urgently?

ANNAN Yeah, I think it's a recognition that things are not working the way they had hoped and that it is essential to take a critical review - take a critical look at what is going on and, if necessary, change course. I hope that is the intention behind it. I know both men well, Mr Baker and Mr Hamilton, they are very experienced and outstanding men and the panel, the members of the task force, were all extremely talented and good people and I hope they will come with advice that will be helpful to the administration. I had the opportunity of talking to them myself.

DOUCET: Because there's no denying the risks at stake here - you met Middle East leaders this summer, they said to you that the whole region had been radicalised and destabilised. In fact, they said it was a disaster.

ANNAN This is the feeling of the leaders in the region and in the streets as well. The people are worried - they are worried about the future, they are worried about the broader Middle East, they are worried about the tensions with Iran, they are worried about Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and some would even stretch it as far as to Afghanistan. So we have a very worrisome situation in the broader Middle East and we also need to look at them as a whole, not as individual conflicts. There are linkages between these crises.

DOUCET: But when you see this unfolding, in the dark of night, do you ever think, "I, as the Secretary-General, could have done more to stop it personally"?

ANNAN You mean the war or the situation?

DOUCET: The war.

ANNAN I think as Secretary-General I did everything I could. I worked with the member states, and you've read some of the comments I made before the war.

DOUCET: But you made many comments, for example, you waited 'til 2004 in a BBC interview to say the war was "illegal".

ANNAN No.

DOUCET: Why didn't you stand up in the UN Security Council and say in 2003, "This war is illegal without a Security Council resolution"?

ANNAN I think, if you go back to the records, you will discover that before the war I said that for the US and its allies to go to war without Security Council approval would not be in conformity with the Charter.

DOUCET: Which is a very sort of UN - (ANNAN TRIES TO SPEAK) - bureaucratic thing, rather than saying "it's illegal" which would have much more impact. And your aides say to me, "This was Kofi Annan, the cautious man, not wanting to confront."

ANNAN It's easy to - what do the Americans call it? - 'Saturday morning quarterbacking', or 'armchair critic'. What they should understand is this is an organisation of member states. When they speak with one voice it's extremely effective, when the membership is divided, in particular to the extent that they were at that time, the Secretary-General has the responsibility to try and bring them together. He has the responsibility not to exacerbate the division, he has the responsibility to also honour the principles and the ideals that are the foundations of the organisation.

DOUCET: Yes, to uphold the Charter and the principles of the United Nations.

ANNAN Exactly, but that's why I'm saying - so you can say it, there was no doubt, not only with the member states or the people of the world where I stood and all the statements I made, but you have to go and really come out brutally and exacerbate the situation, which would not have stopped the war anyway. I mean, it was one of those situations where even before a shot had been fired, you had millions in the street and it didn't make a difference.

DOUCET: But for you, in that position, a very difficult, devastating time. Your aides say that you lost your voice -

ANNAN Yeah, it was very difficult, very painful, because I really, really felt we should have tried harder to avoid it and I was very worried about the consequences and the results.

DOUCET: You lost your voice, you became depressed, it was almost, some said, a metaphor for your sense of powerlessness in this crucial moment for the UN for you personally.

ANNAN Yeah, there wasn't much to celebrate, because it was very melancholic to see what was happening. And, as I said, being conscious of what the results would be and being powerless to stop it. I mean, I did work with quite a lot of heads of states in their capitals, on the phone and elsewhere, working with the inspectors, but the dye was cast and nothing could stop it.

DOUCET: And from then, from that moment, for you personally, it got even worse.

ANNAN It got worse.

DOUCET: 2004, you described it as your "annus horribilis", the Oil-for-Food scandal broke, the allegations about your own son being involved in the scandal, allegations of your own personal involvement.

ANNAN I don't think there were also allegations of my personal involvement.

DOUCET: You were cleared, but the fact that you hadn't exercised enough oversight over the 60 billion dollar Oil-for-Food scheme -

ANNAN I think we have to put this in perspective. There was a vicious campaign against the UN, there's no doubt.

DOUCET: By?

ANNAN Well, forces outside this building, let me put it that way.

DOUCET: Right-wing senators in the United States? Right-wing media?

ANNAN Yes, to some extent they were part of it. But let me say -

DOUCET: What was their conspiracy? They were against you? Against the United Nations? It was a vendetta because you were on the wrong side with the Iraq war? What was it?

ANNAN I think there was a sense in this building that it was payback time for Iraq. But let me explain what happened. I think we do not deny the fact that there may have been management weaknesses and all that. My son was mentioned, there were lots of leaks during the investigation, he sued the Sunday Times and he won, because they have said - but of course we don't hear much about that - and when you look at the Volcker Committee's report carefully, it was only one staff member who was supposed to have taken 147,000 and that is circumstantial evidence. But the bulk of the money, the ten billion or so Saddam made through smuggling was on the watch of the member states. And it was 2,200 companies from these same member states who made the deals with Saddam. They had an obligation under a Chapter Seven resolution to monitor the behaviour of their companies and they did not do that either. I think also there has been a tendency to generalise from the particular - the UN is not -

DOUCET: But still, the UN was -

ANNAN We took a hit, I'm not denying that.

DOUCET: You called the conclusions of Paul Volcker "deeply embarrassing", "painful" - how much did it undermine your leadership?

ANNAN Well, it was difficult at the beginning and it may have, for a while, but I think most people understood what was going on.

DOUCET: How close did you come to resigning?

ANNAN Not really, I didn't consider it seriously. I mean, some people felt, because a junior senator called for my resignation, I should have considered it; it wasn't his place.

DOUCET: But it weakened you in some way. One of your senior envoys told me that he felt that you were so worried that they had very damaging details about your son, Kojo, that it stayed your hand, you didn't take any actions because you were afraid that the Americans could use this information against you.

ANNAN They had no information. At the end of the day, they didn't find anything.

DOUCET: But was it a burden for you, thinking of this, that it -

ANNAN I don't think... As a father, obviously, I would be worried - and as Secretary-General for an organisation that I've spent my life with, to see it being battered and accused and to see that misinformation - and in some situations, lies - put out there, was not pleasant. I mean, it was not good for the UN, it was not good for my son or for me, either as a father or Secretary-General, and I think anyone in that situation would have been pained.

DOUCET: It must have been hard being Secretary-General at a time of one superpower in the world, and in your second-term administration, which had an aggressive unilateralism?

ANNAN I think that is changing.

DOUCET:
What was it like then?

ANNAN No, it was -

DOUCET: It must have been hard.

ANNAN It was hard for the UN, because -

DOUCET: Was it hard for you?

ANNAN Yes, it was hard for me, because you need to work with the member states, you need to get them together, you need to get them to have a certain understanding of how they will work to make the world turn around. When there are divisions between the member states, the Secretary-General has very little room for manoeuvre.

DOUCET: But it wasn't just difficulties. You spoke earlier this year of a "poisoned atmosphere". At one point, according to some of your aides, you said to the controversial US Ambassador, John Bolton, you told him to "stop this intimidation" over the reform process.

ANNAN No, the atmosphere is poisoned - they see it in terms of the north-south divide, it really has been exacerbated now.

DOUCET: It's the worst it's ever been.

ANNAN And then you also have the situation -

DOUCET:
Some of your aides tell me that it's the worst it's ever been, the north-south divide?

ANNAN I'm not sure they can really say that they have been. We've been through this before, we've been through this sort of thing before, but it is bad - I mean, I'm not hiding it - and the member states also see almost every proposal in terms of power - which group is going to gain power and which group is going to lose power - and they believe the power base of this organisation is too narrowly-based on five permanent members and that there's a need for reform. And I share that view. That's why I pushed very hard for Security Council reform. But -

DOUCET: Do you think it's ever going to happen?

ANNAN It should happen and it will happen.

DOUCET: In the United Nations they call it the "never-ending meeting on UN reform," which has gone on for the last ten years.

ANNAN But reform is a process, it's not an event.

DOUCET: But it's an event that will never happen - why would the five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council give up their powers?

ANNAN No, nobody's asking them to give up their powers, but we're telling them to have a structure of a council, membership of the council, that reflects the realities of the 21st Century, not the geopolitical realities of 1945. It is not sustainable and the change has to come.

DOUCET: Do you think, for example, Britain and France both have seats in the Security Council with vetoes, maybe there should be one seat for Europe?

ANNAN I think during the discussions we had, such a proposal was not put forward.

DOUCET: It would make sense though, wouldn't it?

ANNAN That is for the - I'm not sure if -

DOUCET: As a man who's watched the realities of power?

ANNAN I'm not sure that is going to happen, that's why I don't want to -

DOUCET: Would it make sense?

ANNAN Well, I don't want to go there, because quite frankly -

DOUCET: Because you don't want to upset members of the Security Council?

ANNAN No, no, not at all, not at all - because it's not realistic, and that's why, when I put forward the proposals in my recommendations to the General Assembly, I considered all this and put forward a proposal suggesting that we add ten additional members - six new permanent members without veto, reserving two for Asia, two for Africa, one for Latin America and one for Europe - because I want reform, I'm idealistic but I'm also realistic. And so I think the proposal on the table is a good one and I would want the member states and my successor to pursue it.

DOUCET: Hard to craft new institutions when power in the world is changing; the rise of India and China, for example.

ANNAN Yes, we are going through a change - the world is changing, it's constantly changing, but perhaps it's changing much faster in this era than in previous ones. But this is also part of the reason why you should reform the Council. If (there are) powerful nations and power shifting and countries that make a difference in today's world who are outside the Council, how do you justify that?

DOUCET: But for now, the biggest power is the United States and your deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, said a lot of the problems with this north-south divide come down to the maximalist positions of the United States in the Security Council.

ANNAN On some issues, yes, on some issues that has been the case. We must not forget that the US and the UN and the Secretary-General agree on many things. There are issues we do not agree on and that is the nature of the game, but -

DOUCET: It must have been frustrating for you. Did George W. Bush ever refuse to take a telephone call from you?

ANNAN No, he never did. In fact, on a personal level we get on very well. We talk on the phone and in fact he understands, and I do, that we have different roles. He's the President of the United States and I'm the Secretary-General. We both have our responsibilities. He has to do what he has got to do and I have to do what I have to do. We understand that; I'm not sure if everybody around us understands that.

DOUCET: But it's made your job even more impossible than you've described it?

ANNAN No, if there had been a more harmonious relationship and better relationship between the member states, my job would have been easier. There's no doubt about that.

DOUCET: Another big challenge for you: the situation in Darfur. Many say that Darfur has proven that the United Nations cannot stop genocide.

ANNAN Who and what is the United Nations? The United Nations are the member states.

DOUCET: The Security Council.

ANNAN Your government and mine.

DOUCET:
It's been going on for three years, more than two hundred thousand people have died, two to three million have been displaced.

ANNAN I'm not disputing the gravity of the situation. We've been pushing very hard to get peacekeepers in. We have fourteen thousand humanitarian workers on the ground helping the IDPs. I was in Addis Ababa two weeks or so ago with the Sudanese in the room, with the permanent five members, with the President of the African Union, the Chairman, the Foreign Minister of Egypt and the Secretary-General of the Arab League, and other African ministers from Gabon, from Congo, discussing this issue and putting forward a three-phased approach for us to get the troops in.

DOUCET: But isn't that - I mean, the talking goes on and you have this - one of the big successes of UN reform was this Responsibility to Protect. But you're not protecting - it's been three years.

ANNAN I myself have made that point, that member states made a solemn pledge in the General Assembly to protect. And it's time to redeem that pledge. But the fact that they have not done it in the case of Sudan doesn't mean that that principle is not still important. What is happening, and I don't think the public understand this: Sudan has made it quite clear to the whole world that it will not accept UN peacekeepers. The resolution says we should deploy the troops with the cooperation and consent of the Sudanese. If the Sudanese do not give their consent, no government, not yours or mine, is going to give troops for a peacekeeping operation in Darfur. Some people have said, "Then in that case..." -

DOUCET: But you can't then, you can't protect.

ANNAN Some people have said -

DOUCET: There's no tools in your armoury you could use?

ANNAN No, let me finish. I mean, some have said, "If you do not have a UN force because of lack of consent, a coalition of the willing should go in," and I'm not sure there will be any willing countries. When you say the UN cannot protect, in some situations it has happened where we have been able to send in a force where there is will, and here I'm talking about the will of the member states - the UN is the member states - where there is a will and the determination to act, the organisation is able to act. We have no troops, we have to rely on our member states to make the troops and the resources available.

DOUCET: So, people said after Rwanda, after Srebrenica, "never again". But it's happening again.

ANNAN It is deeply, deeply disappointing and it's tragic but we do not have the resources or the will to confront the situation - as in, if you did it, would you maker the situation worse, or would it be better? I mean, I have gone out and indicated to the Sudanese that if they cannot protect their people, and they are refusing to let the international community come in and assist, they will be held individually and collectively responsible for what is happening and what happens.

DOUCET: But they know there's going to be no sanctions. There's been no effective sanctions, not even a package of carrots and sticks for them.

ANNAN I think the Council has discussed that. I mean, again, here there are divisions in the Council.

DOUCET: Well, exactly, this is exactly the point. For you personally, Rwanda and Srebrenica happened on your watch, you were in a different senior United Nations role, do you sometimes, in the dark of night, say, "I've got to do something about Darfur. It can't happen in my time"?

ANNAN I think that sometimes one has the tendency to have a simplistic approach, as if one individual can solve this. As an individual, I've done my best and I keep pushing, not only the governments, the Sudanese government and all around, and we all need to chip in. Whether it was in Rwanda or Srebrenica or Darfur, I think we take lots of people off the hook and give them an alibi when you find one person and say, "Kofi Annan is responsible." And at that time I was the head of the peacekeeping operation and it would be very easy today to say, "The governments are not responsible, Kofi Annan, or Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the head of peacekeeping operations, are the ones who allowed Darfur to happen." It's easier, it's simple, people may digest that better, but it's not the story, it's not the whole story, and I think we need to really tell the story as completely as possible and in all its complexities. And so to have a scapegoat is fine but it doesn't solve the problem.

DOUCET: We're told that you're going to make this one of your priorities to the day that you leave, on December 31st.

ANNAN You mean Darfur? I'm going to work on it - Darfur and one or two other issues which I'm working on - up until the last day, trying to push as hard as I can.

DOUCET: But for you this has been another rude awakening of the limits of your power. You were supposed to have put people at the centre of the United Nations, you said the responsibility of the UN doesn't end at the frontier of the sovereign state.

ANNAN I think that principle is still a very valid one and I'm extremely happy that the member states have adopted the Responsibility to Protect. But, when you set these standards, the fact that you don't achieve them immediately, don't achieve them the same day is useless. It's a bit like saying there are human rights abuses and therefore the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights is irrelevant.

DOUCET: But does it leave you feeling uneasy, sad?

ANNAN No, I've told you, it's very tragic and painful, not only (to me) as Secretary-General but as a human being and as an African, and I hope all of us feel that way.

DOUCET: Has it been this way for a lot of the things you tried to do? You made the fight against HIV/ AIDS a personal priority, you brought up the Millennium Development Goals as a way to try to halve poverty, but in the last few months you've basically looked at the world, rich and poor countries, and said, "You're not living up to your commitments."

ANNAN I said if they continued the way they are, we will not meet the target by 2015 and that they need to double-up their efforts and the international community and the donor community would also have to help. I had no illusion when we came up with the programme to fight the epidemic of HIV/AIDS or the Millennium Development Goals that it was going to happen overnight. I also knew that some countries with resources and organisation would move faster than others. That is one of the reasons why we set up the Global Fund for HIV, to fight HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, and we've raised billions, and we are helping many, many countries in the developing world and I think that's a major progress compared with where we were five, ten years ago.

DOUCET: But you have said, "We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems if only we had the political will."

ANNAN Yes, we can do more, we can do more. It doesn't mean that nothing has happened. And I agree with that, I still stand by that statement.

DOUCET:
But even on climate change, which affects us all, you recently said there was a frightening lack of leadership.

ANNAN And I stand by that, because it is the responsibility of the leaders to really take this issue seriously. It's one issue that would undermine all our efforts on development and all the progress we think it is making. It is going to be a real constraint on growth and development and they need to take it seriously, but we cannot leave it to the leaders alone. Individual citizens have to get involved. They have power - sometimes they don't realise it. They have power by what they choose to buy, they have power by whom they decide to vote for and which policies they support, and by their grass-roots movements. They can influence politicians to move in the right direction.

DOUCET: Another policy approach identified with you was zero tolerance when it came to sexual abuses carried out by blue helmets - UN peacekeepers. In 2004 there was a scandal involving peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and yet again, in the last few days, there have been reports of abuse. What happened to zero tolerance?

ANNAN We take zero tolerance very seriously and we have tightened up and we have groups that work in these peacekeeping operations. Over the last eighteen months to two years we've looked at over three hundred cases and disciplined well over half of them - some have been dismissed, some have been sent home and others have been disciplined and, in fact, on Monday we are going to have a high-level group - this had been arranged a long time ago, before this piece came up - a high-level discussion on sexual exploitation, warning people - and it's not just for the UN, it's for the UN, the agencies, NGOs and a whole group of other people to share experiences and discuss this and do something about it - even go further than we have.

DOUCET:
But your Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations told the BBC that, "My operating presumption is that this is either a problem or a potential problem in every single one of our missions."

ANNAN I think by that she means that we recruit these people from the wider world - we don't have troops, we borrow them from governments. And by that she's implying it's a problem in society that we have to recognise and deal with, and we need to be realistic that some of these incidents may happen and therefore set up systems and be vigilant to make sure that it does not happen in our operations, particularly when we are there to protect the most vulnerable.

DOUCET: But it has happened - again and again.

ANNAN I don't think she was defending it.

DOUCET: But it has happened again and again, since it first broke as a scandal in 2004. So zero tolerance doesn't seem to be having an impact.

ANNAN I beg to differ. I think you have an absolute position on everything, the moment you declare zero tolerance, everything vanishes. And as I said -

DOUCET: But what would help (so you can) expect it to get better?

ANNAN - we have been very active and we've been challenging some of these governments about their troops, the civilians have been disciplined and some of them have been fired, and we are going to remain vigilant.

DOUCET:
As you get ready to leave, is there something that particularly worries you? For example, you went to Iran recently and the Iranians made it clear to you they're not going to back down on their nuclear programme, they're prepared for the worst. Is that something you think could happen again, a military confrontation?

ANNAN I hope not. As I indicated, I have a great concern for the whole Middle Eastern region and I don't think the Middle East can take another crisis. It's in a very precarious and delicate state at this moment and I have indicated quite clearly that on the Iranian issue we need to do whatever we can to get a negotiated solution and that, in my mind, is the only one.

DOUCET: Do you think that there are others, though, perhaps other countries who may be thinking about a military solution since the diplomacy's not working?

ANNAN It'd be extremely unwise for that country and for the world and everything should be done to stop it.

DOUCET:
What worries you though, is there something in particular that you worry about as you -

ANNAN No, obviously I am looking at the situation in Lebanon and I'm looking at the situation in Darfur. And we are also monitoring the installation of the new government in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which had its first elections in 40 years, and I hope this is an opportunity for them to stabilise their country, work with each other and begin to exploit the resources of the country for the benefit of their people. And if that country is settled, the neighbouring countries would also be settled. Don't forget, we called it Africa's World War, because seven or eight countries were pulled into that war.

DOUCET:
In some ways are you glad to leave what you called "an impossible job"? You always said you weren't so comfortable in this global spotlight.

ANNAN No, I think it's wonderful to be moving to the next phase of my life. Change is renewal, it's challenging, I've really, as I've said, I've been very privileged to have served as Secretary-General for ten years, but it's time to move on. My successor is in town, we're going through the transition, and I wish him every success.

DOUCET:
Do you sometimes regret that you took a second term? At the end of your first term you were acclaimed as possibly the best ever Secretary-General and yet the second term you were mired in scandals, you yourself became depressed.

ANNAN I don't think you can say I was mired in scandals and I became depressed in the second term. The second term was difficult, but I hope, when historians look at my record, they will look at the totality of the achievements and not - and quite honestly, I think in the scheme of things, in historical terms, you will discover that the Oil-for-Food issue will become a footnote. There are major issues and major things that the organisation has done that I think, from a distance, historians and people who analyse dispassionately will conclude - and in fact when we talk of big scandals in the UN, we should look at the countries themselves and what is happening in these countries, and they even forget that, regardless of all the fuss, the UN achieved its objective in Iraq: the Oil-for-Food programme fed 26 million people and we did it so thoroughly that in the first elections, it was our registration distribution list that was used for elections. But all that is forgotten.

DOUCET: And sadly, do you sometimes worry that that is what people will remember?

ANNAN No, I don't worry. I think it's unfortunate if that's what they will focus on, but I personally have a much broader view of the world and I also have greater confidence in the wisdom and judgement of people, and I think in time they will put things in perspective. So those who want to latch onto Oil-for-Food and make it the most important event in the UN, they are free to do that.

DOUCET: Your biggest regret?

ANNAN My biggest regret - well, it's also linked to Iraq. It was 23 wonderful colleagues and friends I sent to Iraq who got blown away. They went to Iraq to try and help clean up in the aftermath of a war I genuinely did not believe in, and these people, who were wonderful professionals, wonderful friends, were blown up overnight. And of course when that happens, you ask questions, you know: Would they be here if there hadn't been this situation? Would they be here if I hadn't asked them to go?

DOUCET: Do you blame yourself?

ANNAN Not really, but it's natural that you ask questions, and it was very difficult. I mean, Sergio, the man I spoke to the day before he died, full of life, had plans for the future, and the next day he was gone. Nadia, my chief of security, it was very difficult. So you can imagine my disappointment, my melancholy, my discouragement, to lose almost a family and a tribe like that.

DOUCET: Any advice for your successor?

ANNAN He should do it his way. I did it my way, my predecessors did it their way and he should do it his way.

DOUCET: And the Kofi Annan way - a man who said he doesn't like confrontation, who's cautious by nature - that was the best way, in retrospect?

ANNAN I said he should do it his way.

DOUCET: Thank you very much, Kofi Annan.

ANNAN Good. Thank you.

First Broadcast 04th December 2006