UNITED NATIONS - A year-long investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq concluded that the $64 billion humanitarian operation was corrupt and inefficient, and a critical new report says urgent reform is needed at the United Nations.

A draft forward of the report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the largest, most ambitious humanitarian operation ever run by the United Nations was used by Saddam Hussein to his advantage. Neither the U.N. Secretariat nor the U.N. Security Council was clearly in command, which led to "an evasion of personal responsibility at all levels," it said.

The investigative committee, which is U.N.-appointed and supported, will also criticize U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the U.N. Security Council, especially Russia and France, an official familiar with the report said Monday.

Annan's failure to properly manage the $64 billion program will be a central focus, but there is no new "smoking gun" linking him to an oil-for-food contract awarded to a Swiss company that employed his son Kojo, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the report had not been released.

The Independent Inquiry Committee's final report, to be released today, will say the program succeeded in providing minimal standards of nutrition and health care for millions of Iraqis trying to cope with tough U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It also helped in the international effort to deprive Saddam of weapons of mass destruction, the committee said.

"Those were real accomplishments. They were achieved despite uncertain, wavering direction from the Security Council, pressures from competing political forces in Iraq, and endemic corruption on the ground," said the draft forward. "Sadly, those successes fell under an increasingly dark shadow."

The final report is expected to detail the inner workings of oil-for-food over more than 700 pages. Volcker's 1,800-word forward speaks more broadly, focusing on administrative failures and specific reforms the world body must adopt.

It assigns blame to nearly every branch of the United Nations, from Annan, to the U.N. agencies that did work in Iraq, to its member states and the 15-nation Security Council.

"As the years passed, reports spread of waste, inefficiency, and corruption even within the U.N. itself," inquiry chief Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, wrote in the draft forward. "Some was rumor and exaggeration, but much - too much - of it has turned out to be true."

While the forward is critical of U.N. management, and by extension Annan, its overall tone toward him is not entirely critical. Volcker wrote that no secretary-general is chosen for management skills and has the tools for strong executive oversight.