AID-US: Clinton Holds Line on Foreign Aid

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 20 1998 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton, despite his failure to clear U.S. arrears to the United Nations, has held the line on foreign aid in his 500-billion-dollar spending bill.

Barring any last minute hitch, the bill is set for Congressional approval Wednesday. Clinton will receive all of the 17.9 billion dollars he requested for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – his top foreign economic priority for 1998 – and appears to have done well in securing other key accounts which Republicans had resisted funding.

Defying expectations, Clinton got the Republican Congressional leadership to clear all U.S. arrears to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and to provide most of a 155-million-dollar request for the African Development Fund (AfDF).

“Apart from the U.N. arrears and money for (the UN Population Fund) UNFPA, we got nearly everything we wanted,” a senior State Department official told IPS. “We a really can’t complain too much, considering how much Republicans wanted to cut.”

Not counting the money for the IMF, the 1999 U.S. foreign aid bill will total about 13.2 billion dollars – slightly above the 1998 level.

While this is about half the amount in real terms provided by Washington in foreign aid in 1985, it is about 700 million dollars – or 5.5 percent – more than the levels approved by the Republican-led Congress when final negotiations began last week.

For example, the House of Representatives and the Senate approved only 42.5 million dollars and 47.5 million dollars, respectively, for the GEF, a Washington-based multilateral agency which provides grants to developing countries for fighting global environmental problems, such as global warming, ozone depletion, and ocean pollution.

Because of Congressional indifference or hostility to the agency – the only concrete programme to emerge from the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro – Washington had fallen behind in its dues during the past three years, worth more than 192 million dollars.

GEF officials believed they had virtually no hope of recouping the money but surprisingly, the White House persuaded Congress to pay all the arrears. It was unsuccesful, however, in geetiong the Republicans to agree add another 107.5 million dollars as the first US installment of GEF’s second replenishment, which begins next year.

A U.S. Treasury official also hailed as a “major breakthrough” the agreement to provide 128 million dollars of a 155-million- dollar White House request for the AfDF Fund to which Washington has provided only about 45 million dollars over the last four years.

Clinton also succeeded in getting about 30 million dollars more than Congress was willing to provide for de-mining operations abroad (198 million dollars) and for Washington’s voluntary contributions to the United Nations and other international organisations (292 million dollars).

Of the latter, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is earmarked for 105 million dollars, while the balance will be divvied up other agencies, of which the UN Development Programme (UNDP) will receive the most.

Washington, which historically has picked UNDP’s chief, is engaged in a battle with the European Union (EU) to retain that power when the current administrator, James Gustave Speth, is expected to step down early next year. U.S. contributions to the agency are likely to determine the outcome, according to State Department officials.

Clinton also got 922 million dollars out of a request of 930.7 million dollars for the assessed contributions to the United Nations and its specialised agencies for 1999, as well as all 231 million dollars he had requested for UN peacekeeping operations. And he received all 35 million dollars he had requested to provide heating oil for North Korea as part of a multinational deal to replace Pyongyang’s indigenous nuclear programme – which Washington believed was designed to produce nuclear weapons – with safer nuclear reactors financed and built by Japan and South Korea.

House Republicans rejected Clinton’s request last month amid concerns about Pyongyang’s compliance with the deal and its recent launch of a three-stage ballistic missile. But the White House pried the money loose on condition that Clinton certify that North Korea is making progress towards ending its nuclear and missile programmes.

Still, officials here and at the United Nations in New York could not hide their general disappointment over Clinton’s failure to get any money to begin clearing almost 900 million dollars owed to the United Nations as well as any of the 25 million dollars he had requested for UNFPA, five million dollars more than Washington provided last year.

The reason for both failures was “abortion politics.”

Anti-abortion forces, which accuse China of using coercive population-control methods, including abortion, have long tied funding for UNFPA to the agency’s operations in China. The Republican leadership refused to go along with additional funding next year because, in their words, the agency is “starting new programmes in China.”

The failure to fund UNFPA for the first time since 1992, drew fire from a coalition of population and environmental groups who argued that the decision will actually result in more abortions abroad.

“The UNFPA is in no way connected to abortion,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York said Tuesday. “It provides health care counseling and contraception to women who otherwise remain ignorant about their own health as well as that of their children.”

The same forces that oppose UNFPA also have vowed to condition any attempt to pay Washington’s U.N. arrears on banning American funds for any overseas organisation pushing their governments to ease anti-abortion laws. Clinton has vowed to veto any legislation which included such a condition.

The result has been impasse, with neither side getting its way. Under last week’s agreement, 1999 population funding will be limited to 385 million dollars, the same amount as last year.

The bill includes 475 million dollars for U.N. arrears but provides that Clinton can spend it only if he signs a pending authorisation bill which includes the objectionable curbs on population funding, as well as several reforms which Republican want the world body to implement. Clinton has said he will veto the authorisation bill.

Under Article 19 of the UN Charter, member-states which accumulate two years of arrears lose their vote in the General Assembly. But U.S. and U.N. officials say that the administration has worked out a way to use existing and new funds to pay enough by the end of the year to avoid that fate.

“But they won’t be able to do that this time next year,” according to a senior UN official. “They’ve got to get the (the money) next year.”

Most observers, however, believe that will be tough, particularly if, as expected, Republicans increase their ranks in Congress as a result of the November mid-term elections.