By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 23 1997 (IPS)

The new year sees the United Nations, long dominated by its wealthiest patron the United States, in open revolt against Washington’s demands on deciding the future of the world body while not paying its way.

“We are now viewed as slightly lower than a doormat. Our standing is at an all-time low,” admits U.S. delegate Richard Sklar.

And, according to many diplomats here, the year 1998 will witness an erosion of U.S. clout and credibility in an Organisation which is on the brink of near-bankruptcy caused primarily by Washington’s non-payment of more than 1.3 billion dollars.

“If you don’t pay your dues, you have no right to dictate terms. You cannot have it both ways,” says one Third World diplomat.

At the end of December, the United Nations was owed a total of some 2.2 billion dollars, mostly by the United States. Only 99 of the 185 member states had paid their dues in full for 1997. But the United States, while reneging on its commitments to pay its dues, continues to throw its political weight around angering delegates from both developed and developing nations.

The 132 developing nations of the Group of 77 and the 15 members of the European Union (EU) have singly and collectively attacked Washington for holding up its U.N. dues for political reasons.

The European alliance has called for penalties on countries refusing to pay their dues in full, on time and without conditions. If the penalties are enforced, the United States, which has the largest number of contracts for U.N. procurement, could be barred from bidding in the future.

At the General Assembly sessions in December, the Washington cast the only negative vote on several U.N. resolutions that were overwhelmingly supported by the rest of the membership. They included resolutions on unilateral sanctions, Palestine and sustainable human development.

The United States was left standing alone – with no friends or allies – when the United Nations voted on a resolution urging the international community to eliminate “the use of unilateral coercive economic measures against developing countries.” Even Israel, which almost always votes with the U.S., abstained on the resolution.

The New York Times was moved to comment that “American diplomats and State Department officials say there has never been a worse time to represent the United States at the United Nations. The resentment against Washington, once muted, is now openly expressed.”

U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson says he can already see the handwriting on the wall. In the Security Council last month, Richardson was arguing that Iraq had no right to use sovereignty as an excuse to bar U.N. arms inspectors from entering President Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces.

“I was making this point, and they said in effect, that by not dealing with our arrears, we could hardly make the sovereignty argument,” Richardson noted.

Ambassador William van den Heuvel, chairman of the Council of American Ambassadors, says “the anger against us by our strongest allies (at the United Nations) is palpable.”

Van den Heuvel points out that even though the Republican- dominated U.S. Congress has taken a strong stand against the United Nations, the White House should really be speaking up for the world body. But instead, he said, the U.S. representative goes before the U.N.’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee and threatens them unless U.S. dues are reduced from 25 percent to 20 percent.

“That is not the language of a U.S. ambassador at the United Nations. That’s the language of Jesse Helms,(chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the bittest Congressional critic of the United Nations)”, says van den Heuvel.

Ambassador Jack Wilmot of Ghana is outraged over the U.S. threat. “Confrontational postures calculated to coerce or intimidate the Organisation are not only unhelpful but also counterproductive,” he said.

Wilmot said that “it may also not be entirely out of place for member states to consider not only what they put into the Organisation, but also what they get out of the Organisation – in terms of procurement, employment of nationals, revenue from living expenses of accredited delegations and their dependents and above all the forum the Organisation provides for the pursuit of foreign policy objectives.”

Asked about perceived U.S. arrogance, van den Heuvel said: “Well, if you had any American in a club, where one of the leading members refused to pay his dues, but insisted upon at every meeting telling them how they should run that club, you can bet that that American would be enraged, and would tell that person where to go.”

He adds that despite overwhelming support for the United Nations in U.S. public opinion polls, the Clinton Administration has not put any political priority on the survival of the world body.

He said that President Clinton had told a Washington journalist that in the 1992 election campaign he didn’t get a single question throughout the campain on foreign policy. Therefore Clinton understood and accepts, that he came to office in large part because of domestic considerations.

An attempt by the Clinton Administration to pay a large portion of the dues was thwarted in Congress recently because of it was linked to an anti-abortion amendment.

Alvin P.Adams, President of the New York-based U.N. Association of USA, says “it’s a real disgrace for a country that helped inspire and played such a role in the founding of the United Nations… that legislation, conditional as it was, failed in Washingon due to what we believe is an extraneous issue.”

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