UNITED NATIONS: U.N. Head Defiant Against U.S. Attacks

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 7 1996 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali remains defiant in the face of fresh attacks by the United States that he has been lobbying U.S. Congressmen in his bid for a second, five-year term in office.

Boutros-Ghali is a victim of “smear stories and disinformation,” U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said Thursday.

“The Secretary-General is not campaigning and he is not electioneering,” she said responding to a New York Times report that Boutros-Ghali was interfering in U.S. politics by pressing his case in Congress.

Foa told reporters that the Secretary-General has “lots of friends” in Congress, “and he has been on the world scene long before most of you were born.”

“There is no law against talking to friends,” she said of the Secretary-General who has been in touch with Democratic Senator Paul Simon of Illinois, who is retiring from the U.S. Senate this year.

The Bill Clinton Administration said in June that it would veto Boutros-Ghali’s proposed re-election bid because he had failed to cut costs and radically reform the financially ailing organisation.

U.N. diplomats believed, however, that Clinton wanted to dump Boutros-Ghali to score political points over his Republican rival Bob Dole who expressed strong anti-Boutros-Ghali sentiments during the U.S. presidential elections which ended Tuesday.

Far from changing its stance after the elections, the Administration is said to be stepping up its efforts to deny Boutros-Ghali a second-term, according to the report in Thursday’s New York Times.

Besides Simon, the Times said the U.N. head had also phoned Representative Lee Hamilton, a New York Democrat, and Senator Diane Feinstein, a Democrat of California.

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