London, March 30: UN secretary-general Kofi Annan was last night under renewed pressure to resign after investigators revealed that he had sought a job for his son with a firm which later won multi-million pound UN contracts.

A 90-page report stated Annan had used a family friend at the company to seek a post for his son Kojo. It said: ?Shortly after Kojo Annan graduated from university, the secretary-general and (the family friend, Michael) Wilson spoke about the possibility of Kojo Annan working at Cotecna.?

Not long afterwards Kojo Annan was employed at Cotecna, a Swiss firm that three years later succeeded in its long-running bid to win a UN contract to monitor the Iraqi regime?s import of humanitarian goods. The report, by former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, is part of a series of inquiries into the UN oil-for-food programme in Saddam Hussein?s Iraq.

The Volcker report stated that there was insufficient evidence to show that Annan knew that the UN was going to award a contract to a firm which employed his son. It suggested that the contract was properly awarded. But it also attacked the secretary- general for failing to examine the issue properly once he did know of the link.