UNITED STATES: Leaders Use Visit to Grumble about White House

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 1996 (IPS) - If there were a prize for hosting the largest collection of world leaders upset about U.S. foreign policy, the United Nations headquarters in New York would win it this week.

Colombian President Ernesto Samper Pizano says he is being unfairly accused by Washington of ties to drug traffickers. Turkish Foreign Minister and former prime minister Tansu Ciller, is on the defensive about the actions of Ankara’s new Islamist-led government. Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov has grumbled about U.N. sanctions, often maintained by U.S. pressure.

Added to such complaints are the views of nations who regularly rail against U.S. interference in the world, from Iran to Cuba, and the steady drumbeat of protest that Washington still owes some 1.6 billion dollars in dues to the United Nations.

Small wonder that U.S. President Bill Clinton, in the midst of an election campaign, skipped his traditional role of serving as host to the assorted world leaders gathered for the U.N. General Assembly. He skipped a luncheon hosted Monday by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali for world leaders, although the U.S. president normally delivers a toast on the annual occasion.

Instead, Clington showed up on the Assembly’s second day for a mere two hours, signing a nuclear test ban treaty and delivering a brief speech before resuming his electoral campaign in New Jersey.

It is the U.S. election campaign, however, that is giving even U.S. allies some pause as they meet at the Assembly. Clinton’s election drive, they argue, is fuelling much of what they deem is bad about U.S. foreign policy.

Samper blames electoral pressures, and the need for the White House to appear tough in fighting drugs, for his own problems, including the loss of a U.S. visa this summer. The Colombian president, accused of accepting campaign funds in 1994 from the Cali drug cartel, was allowed to enter the United States strictly to attend the current U.N. plenary.

“It is a very difficult moment, but in one way or another, we are doomed to work together,” Samper says of his relationship with Washington. But he adds, “I can see a certain relaxation of the climate between the two countries…elections notwithstanding.”

Ciller, also, implies that domestic politics have weighed more heavily than traditional alliances in some of the recent friction between Ankara and Washington. She complains that a gas deal between Turkey and Iran, planned for months to provide needed electricity to Turkey, has led to a chill between Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan’s government and the White House.

Washington says the agreement may violate new U.S. legislation threatening to penalise third countries for investing in Iran. Ankara responds that the deal is not investment, but normal trade in which both sides build their own portions of a gas pipeline.

“We wanted to go ahead and sign a natural gas agreement,” Ciller says. “Why is it that when Europe does it, it’s okay, but when Turkey does it…it’s a major policy issue for the whole world?”

Many diplomats complain that Clinton’s desire, during his election drive, not to be outflanked by Republican rival Robert Dole underlies these new disputes.

Many have criticised, in particular, legislation signed this year by Clinton that penalises countries dealing with Iran, Libya and Cuba. The White House only swung its support behind those measures, passed by the Republican-led U.S. Congress, in recent months as the elections neared.

“France and Europe do not accept that one country, even if it is the most powerful, is trying to regulate world trade by itself by means of decisions that have extra-territorial scope,” French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette argues in a clear slap at the new laws.

“The World Trade Organisation does not allow it, and no one should doubt the firmness of French and European reactions were such measures actually to be implemented,” he adds.

U.S. support for U.N. sanctions was also criticised, most forcibly, if indirectly, by Russian envoy Primakov. “No sanctions should be used as a means to punish peoples or as an instrument to overthrow governments,” he argued Tuesday.

In an unusual degree of agreement, several of the diplomats warned the Assembly about the dangers of “unilateralism,” singling out a powerful — but unnamed — nation that uses force instead of dialogue to achieve its ends.

“Unilateralism: behind this technocratic word, there lurks the temptation which is all around us to impose the law of the strongest at the expense of dialogue and negotiation,” de Charette argues.

His Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Velayati, uses nearly the same definition while referring specifically to the United States, defining unilateralism as a “total lack of commitment to mutual cooperation and common solutions”.

In some ways, Washington should expect such criticism as the leading superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also, for every critic, there is a nation — from Bosnia- Hercegovina to Haiti — that is here to thank the United States for helping lead efforts to resolve world crises.

Far more worrisome to Washington, however, is that many of the countries most upset about “unilateralism” are doing something about it. Sixteen countries Wednesday supported a call to “renew multilateralism” by strengthening the United Nations and committing themselves to resolving conflicts through multilateral cooperation.

Those countries — Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, the Czech Republic, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea and Sweden — may not all have joined the camp of U.S. critics.

But their joint statement nonetheless added that “all countries, without exception, must pay their assessed (U.N.) dues in full, on time, and without conditions.” In this fractious Assembly, that has been one of the most frequent criticisms of all to be specifically targeted at the United States.