UNITED NATIONS-U.S.: Annan, Clinton Agree, but Tensions Linger

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 1997 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has enjoyed a warm greeting from U.S. President Bill Clinton and other top officials on a three-day visit to Washington, but U.S.- U.N. relations may not prove to be so friendly in the long term.

Annan’s reception in Washington certainly is a marked improvement over the chill between the White House and his predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, over the past two years. The thaw was most clearly evident as Clinton said Thursday that he was “very pleased that the United Nations chose Kofi Annan”, calling the Ghanaian diplomat “a proven reformer (and) a man committed to a revitalised United Nations”.

Just as significant, U.S. officials — who were instrumental in winning Annan’s selection to replace Boutros-Ghali last month — gave the most encouraging signals yet that they intend to pay some 1.3 billion dollars in overdue funds that the world body greatly needs.

“We cannot expect to lead through the United Nations unless we are prepared to pay our way,” Clinton said after his Thursday meeting with Annan. He said he had devised budget requests to Congress that included the prompt repayment of the arrears, and would work to persuade Congress to approve the allotments.

“I wanted to pay it back all along,” Clinton said of the arrears. But now, he argued, with Annan in place, Congress can be convinced that a U.N. administration committed to reform and worthy of U.S. support needs adequate funding.

For his part, Annan fulfilled a key U.S. demand by pledging his commitment to reforming the United Nations, which many U.S. politicians — particularly in the Republican-led Congress — want to see cut back.

“The world has changed, and we also have to change,” the new secretary-general said. “If we do not change, we may lose our relevance.” All 185 U.N. member states, he argued, wanted to see the organisation leaner and more efficient, and he would work to achieve that goal.

To signify his commitment to reforms, Annan brought along his newly appointed executive coordinator for reforms, Canadian businessman Maurice Strong, who has already been entrusted to root out overlapping functions or inefficiencies in the U.N. bureaucracy.

Still, behind Clinton’s and Annan’s warm words of their mutual commitment to reforms and adequate U.N. funding, divisions remain over exactly how the United Nations will be changed.

As Annan pointedly said during a visit to the U.S. State Department, reform “will go forward, but we cannot do it on a shoestring”. The new secretary-general also recently warned new Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — a key player, as then- U.N. ambassador, in the drive to unseat Boutros-Ghali — that the wishes of all U.N. members, not simply the United States, would have to be reflected in the reform drive.

“Sometimes it must seem that the United Nations does nothing but reform,” Annan complained in his first speech to the General Assembly this month. “What we have to do is not to undertake more half-measures or rush to embrace new changes. We must take stock.” The U.N. chief indicated that the U.N. Secretariat, which was cut from 1,100 to 900 staff members under Boutros-Ghali, will not sustain new cuts soon.

That approach is not likely to placate Congress, which used the issue of U.N. reform last year as much to taunt Clinton during an election year as to prod Boutros-Ghali.

When Representative Benjamin Gilman of New York — head of the House of Representatives committee on foreign affairs — met with Annan this week, he gave out a list of changes Congress seeks: a U.N. code of conduct, a freeze on salaries and a hold on procurements.

But Annan, according to spokesman Juan Carlos Brandt, responded that, while he agreed on the need for a code of conduct, he felt “the United States cannot be a delinquent and a leader at the same time”.

The meeting with Gilman also indicated that some of the fall- out from last year’s Republican attacks on Boutros-Ghali has yet to subside. Gilman cautioned Annan that the United Nations should not seek to impose any type of global tax, such as one on financial transactions — an idea suggested last year by some analysts to ease the U.N. financial crisis, but quickly dropped by Boutros-Ghali. Annan told Gilman that no such plans are in the works, Brandt said.

Worries about U.N. taxation are just one of many fears the Republicans pounced on in recent years, as they capitalised on the belief by many far-right and militia groups that the United Nations constitutes an authoritarian “world government”.

The Republican platform for presidential candidate Robert Dole last year warned that U.S. troops should not participate in U.N. peacekeeping, and defended the sovereignty of U.S. parks from any U.N. authority — a notion U.N. officials thought ludicrous. Many of those worries, in turn, have circulated in the United States at least since the formation in the 1950s of the far-right John Birch Society.

“Please tell your citizens we have no black helicopters,” Annan told Vice President Al Gore during his trip, in a wry comment on the militia rumours. “In fact, the United Nations couldn’t even handle Somalia.”

Although the end of the 1996 election year itself has dampened such fears, some Congressional leaders — notably Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, head of the Senate foreign relations committee — remain wary of the world body. Helms recently argued that, just because Boutros-Ghali was rebuffed in his quest for a new term, Congress could not be assumed to “pay up that big check and forget about it”.

Helms responded to questions Thursday on whether the United States should pay up to the United Nations with a blunt “No”.

“I want to see what’s fair to the American people,” the senator said of the U.N. assessment of dues, under which Washington is supposed to fund a quarter of U.N. operating costs. “I don’t think what is going on now is fair. You take Japan and the United States out of the contributions, and you’ve got very little coming (from other countries).”

Nevertheless, in a sign of how far the current truce extends, Helms also hosted a reception for Annan during the secretary- general’s stay, which ends Friday.

And Helms also steered quick approval for Albright, who is upbeat on Annan and has become more outspoken on the need for U.N. funding. Then again, as U.N. ambassador, Albright was also an effusive supporter of Boutros-Ghali for the first two years of the Clinton presidency — only to dump him when the political tide shifted.