POLITICS-UN: UN Diplomats Share US Desire for Reform, says Report

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 1998 (IPS) - Support for reforms in the United Nations, being pushed by the United States, is much more widespread among U.N. ambassadors than generally is believed, according to a survey by the Fund for Peace, an independent non- profit group.

The Washington-based organisation contends that the United States has many allies in the effort to reshape the United Nations – but that it has lost opportunities to forge pro-reform coalitions, largely because the United States has not paid its dues.

“I think the United States missed an opportunity” by not paying some 1.6 billion dollars in arrears, says Blanche Blank, author of the Fund’s new report – It Takes Two to Tango: International Perspectives on the United Nations. “It’s foolishness not to pay.”

Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, notes that the report – which summarises confidential interviews with 46 U.N. ambassadors – suggests that there is “sufficient goodwill to repair the damage” if Washington adopts a more responsible attitude at the world body.

“We call on Congress to authorise that the United States pay its dues,” Baker said in launching the report Thursday. “If we do not turn it around, we will be facing not only a financial crisis, but also a moral crisis.”

According to the report, “U.N. ambassadors are far more critical about the world organisation than is generally thought.” The ambassadors interviewed “mentioned 31 different and distinct complaints” about the world body’s functions, from the composition of the Security Council to the “inadequate” level of attention focused on development work.

Those criticisms, Blank conceded, are different from the proposals for streamlining the U.N. Secretariat which have dominated discussion in the U.S. Congress. Nevertheless, she added, her interviews indicate that there is considerable common ground between the reform goals of the United States and those of the 184 other U.N. member states.

One ambassador told Blank that “the whole Secretariat needs to be re-organised. On paper it looks good, but really it is lousy. We need to clean up serious malpractise and corruption.”

Another chided the U.N. Secretariat as “an agency that did not practise family planning” and therefore created “too many offspring … and it is hard to kill them.” Other diplomats cited in the report complained about the “bloated bureaucracy”, lack of transparency and inefficiency – all charges pursued in recent years by the U.S. Congress and President Bill Clinton’s administration.

At the same time, the report suggests that it remains difficult for Washington to make alliances on reform because “antipathy against the United States is deep.” The interviews included comments ranging from “mild annoyance to bitter anger” at U.S. policies, including its dominance over U.N. affairs as well as the arrears dispute.

The lingering tensions over U.S. non-payment has made cooperation over a vast range of issues difficult, admitted U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson. “The relationship between the United States and the United Nations in recent years has been strained,” he acknowledged Thursday.

Richardson says that the friction over dues has harmed everything from the traditional U.S. role on a key budgetary committee to Washington’s efforts to maintain sanctions on Iraq.

Last week, Richardson told the Harvard Forum “When I go to my fellow ambassadors and ask for their support on resolutions or agenda items, my position is weakened by America’s debtor status. On a number of substantive issues from the extension of peacekeeping operations to sanctions regimes, America’s national interests and objectives are being compromised by the failure to pay dues.”

The U.S. ambassador tried last year to craft a budget plan acceptable to Congress which would pay at least some 850 million dollars as a “down payment” on the arrears. However, the plan unraveled last month when a separate dispute on abortion scuttled the plan to pay U.N. arrears, leaving the budget amendment in legislative limbo.

Richardson argues that Congress must adopt the plan to pay partial arrears when it convenes anew next week. Otherwise, he says, efforts to reduce the level of dues the United States pays will fail.

A U.S. drive to reduce Washington’s assessment from paying 25 percent of U.N. dues at present to contributing only 20 percent within the next two years faltered after the arrears compromise was scrapped by Congress. But Richarson noted that the United Nations remains willing to consider revising the U.S. assessment, provided that the U.S. dues are repaid soon.

“If we fail now, that window of opportunity … will close for three years,” he warned.