By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 5 1996 (IPS)

After slashing nearly 1,000 jobs earlier this year, a cash-strapped United Nations is again sharpening its knives to trim its bureaucracy even further, according to a high-ranking U.N. official.

“Wave two would hit at the end of the year,” predicts Joseph Connor, Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management.

Connor said the much-maligned U.N. bureaucracy — often described as “bloated”– stood at about 10,000 employees worldwide at the beginning of this year before being downsized largely through attrition.

Of the some 9,000 remaining employees, he said, about 4,800 are based in the Secretariat in New York, operating on a budget of about 1.3 billion dollars annually.

“One thousand posts had become vacant, or termination agreements have been signed which, when fully operational in the next couple of months, would make the posts vacant,” Conner said.

“And,” he stressed, “we intend to hold them vacant.”

Connor pointed out that the total U.N. staff numbered about 12,000 worldwide in 1995. Therefore, he said, the present cuts amounted to a 25-percent reduction.

“More (cuts) will come because the Secretary-General’s (Boutros Boutros-Ghali) focus is on maintaining zero nominal growth in the future,” he explained.

Connor said that when the current reform process is over the United Nations will be “a more slimmed-down, refocused and simplified organisation.”

“The Secretary-General has been the instigator and I have been the implementer, and that process would broaden,” he said.

Connor pointed out that a communique issued after last week’s meeting of the Group of Seven most industrialised nations recognised that the U.N. reform process was “only just beginning, but concrete results are already visible.”

The United States, which owes the world body more than 1.3 billion dollars in outstanding dues, has argued that the current U.N. financial crisis can be resolved only if the world body reforms and restructures itself.

But Boutros-Ghali has argued that the cash crisis has nothing to do with the reform of the United Nations. “I don’t believe that reform will solve the financial crisis,” he said earlier this year.

“It is a purely political problem,” Boutros-Ghali added.

The Secretary-General’s views on the financial crisis, however, have been echoed by the largest single coalition of developing nations at the United Nations: the 132-member Group of 77.

The group maintains that the current crisis in the United Nation is primarily due to the non-payment of dues by member nations, particularly the United States.

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright told reporters last year that during the Cold War years of neglect, the U.N. staff grew to “elephantine proportions.”

“Now in the absence of Cold War divisions,” she added, “we are asking the elephant to do gymnastics.”

The reform and restructuring of the United Nations will be the number one job of the 185-member General Assembly, she said.

Albright proposed that the U.N. Secretariat eliminate waste by privatising services, reducing paperwork, cutting excess staff, stopping unnecessary travel, eliminating some benefits, and minimising the use of consultants.

The U.S. Ambassador also called for a revamping of the U.N. Department of Public Information, the budget for which “can certainly be cut sharply without any damage to the Functioning of the United Nations.”

Additionally, she called for the U.N. to extend the authority of the inspector general beyond the Secretariat to all the major agencies in order to eliminate waste and corruption in the U.N. system.

Opening the meetings of the Advisory Committee on the Administrative and Budgetary Questions — a U.N. investigative body which meets behind closed doors– would also help to eliminate waste, Albright said.

She also argued that the U.N. Trusteeship Council be abolished along with the ad hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean and the Information Committee. “Committees that have outlived their usefulness, she said, “should close up shop.”

The United Nations, Albright said, also should take a “very hard look at whether the Decolonization Committee still has important business to conduct.”

Albright also advised about the repetition and duplication in U.N. efforts.

“We approve many resolutions year after year, in virtually identical form, first at the Economic and Social Council, then in the General Assembly’s second or third committee, then in the General Assembly,” the U.S. Ambassador said. “Let’s stop chewing over the same issues again and again.”

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