POLITICS: How U.S Manipulates United Nations

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 8 1999 (IPS) - A new book by former UN Secretary- General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt provides an inside view of how the United Nations is being manipulated by its most powerful member: the United States.

Boutros-Ghali goes to great lengths in proving how the United States sets the UN agenda, politically and administratively, in “Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga” (Random House), a 345 page book to be released later this month.

He provides a blow-by-blow account of how Washington orchestrated a campaign to him of a second five-year term as Secretary-General when the first ended in December 1996.

Boutros-Ghali points out that although he was accused of being “too independent” of the US, he did virtually everything in his power to please Washington.

The former UN chief recalls a meeting in which he told then US Secretary of State Warren Chrisopther that many Americans had been appointed to UN jobs “at Washington’s request over the objections of other UN member states.”

“I had done so, I said, because I wanted American support to succeed in my job (as Secretary-General”), Boutros-Ghalis says. But Christopher refused to respond.

One of his “heated disputes” with then US Ambassador Madeleine Albright (currently US Secretary of State) was in 1995 over the appointment of a new director-general for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The argument “seemed to irritate Albright more than any previous issue between us.”

President Bill Clinton wanted William Foege, a former head of the US Centres for Disease Control, to be appointed UNICEF chief to succeed James Grant, also an American.

“I recalled that President Clinton had pressed me to appoint him (Foege) when we had met in the Oval Office in May 1994,” Boutros-Ghali says in his book. “I replied to her (Albright) as I had then to President Clinton: that while Dr. Foege was without doubt a distinguished person, unfortunately, I could not comply.”

He also told Clinton that he was personally and publicly committed to increasing the number of women in the top ranks of the United Nations, and UNICEF would particularly benefit from a woman’s leadership.

Belgium and Finland already had put forward “outstanding” women candidates – and since the US had refused to pay its UN dues and was also making “disparaging” remarks about the world body – “there was no longer automatic acceptance by other nations that the director of UNICEF must inevitably be an American man or woman.”

“The US should select a woman candidate and then I will see what I can do,” since the appointment involved consultation with the 36-member UNICEF Executive Board, Boutros-Ghali told Albright.

“Albright rolled her eyes and made a face, repeating what had become her standard expression of frustration with me,” he writes. When the US kept pressing Foege’s candidature, Boutros- Ghali said that “many countries on the UNICEF Board were angry and (told) me to tell the United States to go to hell.”

The US eventually submitted an alternate woman candidate: Carol Bellamy, a former director of the Peace Corps. Although Elizabeth Rehn of Finland received 15 votes to Bellamy’s 12 in a straw poll, Boutros-Ghali said he asked the Board president to convince the members to achieve consensus on Bellamy so that the US monopoly of UNICEF since its creation in 1947 could continue.

When he took office in January 1992, Boutros-Ghali notes that 50 percent of the staff assigned to the UN’s administration and management were US citizens, although Washington paid only 25 percent of the UN’s regular budget.

When the Clinton administration took office in Washington in January 1993, Boutros-Ghali received a signal that two of the highest ranking UN staffers, appointed on the recommendation of the outgoing (President George) Bush administration, Under- Secretary-General Richard Thornburgh and Under-Secretary-General Joseph Verner Reed were to be dismissed.

This was despite the fact that they were theoretically “international civil servants”answerable only to the world body, Boutros Ghali says.

They were both replaced by two other Americans who had the blessings of the Clinton Administration.

Just before his election in November 1991, Boutros-Ghali remembers someone telling him that John Bolton, the US Assistant Secretary of State for International Organisations, was “at odds” with the earlier Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar because he had “been insufficiently attentive to U.S. interests.”

“I assured Bolton of my own serious regard for US policy add that, without American support, the United Nations would be paralysed,” he says.

Boutros-Ghali also relates how Secretary of State Warren Christopher tried to convince him to publicly declare that he would not run for a second term as Secretary-General. But he refused.

“Surely, you cannot dismiss the Secretary-General of the United Nations by a unilateral diktat of the United States. What about the rights of the other Security Council members”?, he asked at the time.

But Christopher “mumbled something inaudible and hung up, deeply displeased”.

Boutros-Ghali also said that in late 1996 Albright, on instructions from the US State Department, was fixated on a single issue that had dominated her life for months: the “elimination” of Boutros-Ghali.

“She had accomplished her diplomatic mission with skill. She had carried out her campaign with determination, letting pass no opportunity to demolish my authority and tarnish my image, all the while showing a serene face, wearing a friendly smile, and repeating expressions of friendship and admiration,” he wrote.

“I recalled what a Hindu scholar once said to me: there is no difference between diplomacy and deception.” ————–

(“Unvanquished: a US-UN Saga”, published by Random House, New York, USA. Web site: www.atrandom.com Price: 29.95 dollars)