UNITED NATIONS-US: Clinton Fails to Impress General Assembly

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 1997 (IPS) - U.S. President Bill Clinton has battled uphill in recent years trying to convince the U.N. General Assembly of Washington’s good intentions worldwide – and his appearance Monday at the Assembly’s plenary session proved no exception.

Clinton came here this year facing two major challenges: to convince the 184 other U.N. member states that Washington intends paying the 1.5 billion dollars it owes in arrears, and to show that the United States will help to eliminate landmines. Clinton’s administration has lagged lagged conspicuously on both issues, and his words Monday did little to help them forward.

One week after U.S. officials in Oslo declared that Washington would not sign a treaty to ban landmines when it is presented in Ottawa in December, Clinton avoided mentioning the landmine dispute entirely. In that respect, he stood alone on a day when world leaders from more than a dozen nations lauded the campaign to secure a landmine ban.

The president announced few new commitments, besides submitting for ratification to Congress on Monday a 1996 treaty – the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – which is intended to ban all nuclear tests. (The treaty likely will not take effect for many years, since two key nations believed to possess nuclear weapons – India and Pakistan – refuse to sign.)

The lack of new initiatives in the president’s speech was especially apparent on the arrears issue. Clinton promised the General Assembly that Washington is now ready to pay “the bulk of its dues,” with Congress about to ratify the payment of some 819 million dollars of the money it owes.

However the president was shown up by U.S. businessman Ted Turner, who last week stunned diplomats by pledging to contribute one billion dollars over the next 10 years for U.N. humanitarian and development work.

Turner’s surprise offer helped to make Clinton’s slow-moving efforts to free up funds from a U.N.-wary Congress look weak, and inspired the United Nations to redouble its efforts to prod governments into paying their dues. It also allowed them to trumpet a new era of private-sector collaboration.

“Civil society organisations and the private sector are approaching us with ever-greater frequency to work with us and to lend us assistance,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at the outset of the Assembly’s 52nd session Monday.

“The extraordinarily generous and historically unprecedented one-billion-dollar gift from Mr Ted Turner for U.N. work in the development, environment and humanitarian fields is the most visible expression of this new and promising relationship.”

Now, Annan argued, it was time for governments “to do what your legal obligations require: to liquidate your arrears, and to pay your future assessments in full, on time and without conditions.”

That theme was taken up more pointedly by governments here who have been increasingly more vocal about the U.S. arrears. “I am not a billionaire – I am not even a millionaire – but I know on behalf of my country my obligations, ” quipped Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen of Denmark, stressing the need for all member states to pay their dues without conditions.

Clinton praised Turner’s offer, calling the maverick founder of Cable News Network “truly visionary” and hailed the growth of U.N.-private sector collaborations. “I hope that more will follow his lead,” the U.S. president added.

He also acknowledged the need “to put this issue of debt and dues behind us for once and for all.” But even here, Clinton added a key condition before Washington’s support is guaranteed: “We would like member states to adopt a more equitable scale of assessments.”

In particular, U.S. officials are hoping that Washington, which is currently assessed to pay one-quarter of the world body’s roughly one-billion-dollar annual budget, will only have to pay 20 percent in the future. Other faster-growing economies, like Germany, Japan and China, should be able to pay more, the United States argues.

Washington faces real challenges in obtaining such a concession this year, at the same time when the United Nations has pursued reforms which many countries – including much of the Third World – have contended were first pushed by the United States.

In addition, Annan, who presented his own reform plan in July, has included many changes – including an expansion of U.N. efforts to raise money for development in the South and a new Department for Disarmament and Arms regulation – which Washington does not favour. As a result, the General Assembly likely will spend months of haggling before any U.N. reform plan is approved.

Still, the U.S. position is no worse than in other years, when Clinton regularly is assailed on the dues problem and other controversies.

Last year, when Clinton delivered his Assembly address, Washington was already being criticised for its campaign to unseat then-Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But by December, the United States had won that effort – which is why this year, Clinton was able to praise the U.N. reforms developed by Washington’s choice to succeed Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan.