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Investigators confronted Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday with findings of their probe of the $64-billion Iraqi oil-for-food program, concluding that he bore primary responsibility for mismanagement and faulting him for not acting to halt suspected abuses by contractors and laxity by member states, said diplomats who spoke to Annan after the meeting.

The investigators, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, are expected to issue a public report Wednesday about abuses in the relief program. A committee spokesman said it would be at least 700 pages and would also examine the responsibility of Security Council members who knowingly allowed Saddam Hussein to reap billions from smuggling and kickbacks.

Annan's office refused to comment publicly Thursday on the meeting between the secretary-general and the investigators. Diplomats who talked to Annan afterward, but asked to remain anonymous, said he told them that the investigators had "no smoking gun" or evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

A senior aide to Annan, who also asked to remain anonymous, said, "I very much hope that while it may be a damaging report, it will be a survivable report.

"He does feel that he has not done anything wrong, and that the program should have been much better managed, and that he clearly will take the responsibility for that, unambiguously," the senior aide said. "But he doesn't think it is a resigning matter."

The timing of the report is tricky for the U.N. The report's release will come a week before Annan will ask world leaders at a U.N. summit to expand the powers of the secretary-general and support ambitious reforms he has proposed for the troubled organization.

Although U.N. officials hoped that the independent inquiry would clear doubts about Annan's alleged conflict of interest and mismanagement in the oil-for-food program, it is instead likely to raise questions about whether he retains the credibility needed to clean up the organization — or even to survive the last 16 months of his term as secretary-general.