SUNS  4308 Friday 23 October 1998



United Nations: U.S. upbraided over failure to pay arrears



United Nations, Oct 21 (IPS/Farhan Haq) -- The failure of the Republican-led U.S. Congress to approve payment of Washington's arrears with the United Nations left officials here feeling betrayed and they warned of a possible backlash against the decision.

Congress had prodded the administration of President Bill Clinton into demanding that the world body streamline its operations and adopt many US-recommended reforms during the past year. Despite trimming its costs and bureaucracy, the long-standing 1.5 billion dollars arrears has not
been paid to the United Nations, becoming entangled instead in political wrangling about U.S. abortion advocacy.

With Congress expected to approve a small amount of U.N. funding as part of the budget agreement to be signed by President Bill Clinton this week, Washington has avoided the possibility that it could lose its voting rights in the 185-nation General Assembly. Even so, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday, "the situation looks grim".

"Congress and the (Clinton) administration once again have failed to honour America's legal commitment and moral obligation to the United Nations and its 184 other member states by paying even a portion of its long-standing debts," Annan said while travelling in Tokyo. "I find this outcome truly disturbing."

The new spending bill does not contain a single penny for U.N. arrears," said one senior U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. That failure in turn, he added, could hurt support for other U.S. causes at the world body, because "anything that is interpreted as being favourable to the US is hard to sell to (other) member states".

The official warned that, in particular, further efforts to reform the world body are becoming more difficult, with the other U.N. member states wary of approving such changes until the arrears are paid. He argued that it has been harder for U.N. officials to win acceptance for streamlining measures just over the past six months, as the promise of arrears payments faded.

In addition, he said, "further threats by Congress (demanding reforms), if they were to materialise, would be counter-productive. There would be a backlash."

For Washington, the one bright side is that the budget agreement contained some $197 million in current funds for the United Nations.

Along with some previously-approved funds already on the way to the world body, the U.S. payment this year - of nearly 350 million dollars - would be enough to avoid the loss of Assembly voting rights.

U.N. member states automatically lose their vote in the Assembly when their unpaid arrears total as much as two years' worth of dues. Under the current agreement, the U.N. official said, Washington would "squeak by" with enough new funding to avoid losing its vote this Dec. 31 - although, he added, it would face the same challenge next year.

Yet the retention of the US vote - although it avoids a potential embarrassment for Washington - does little to contain the bitterness at the United Nations.

Some UN officials resent that a previous arrears agreement, which would have given a 'down payment' of nearly half a billion dollars in dues, collapsed when Republicans added language unacceptable to Clinton, which conditioned the payment on Washington's cutting of financial support to population groups which advocate abortion abroad.

Similarly, anti-abortion forces in Congress blocked US funding for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which some Republicans have attacked on charges, denied by the agency, that it has supported draconian population control policies in China.

Although Washington chipped in $20 million for UNFPA over the past year, the current budget includes no money for the population agency. "This decision penalises not only UNFPA but the millions of ordinary women and men on whose behalf we work," UNFPA Executive Director Nafis
Sadik said Tuesday. "It will inevitably reduce our ability to implement vital programmes in the area of reproductive health and rights."

Sadik added that the lack of funding could actually prompt more abortions worldwide - in contrast to the Republicans' stated intentions of discouraging abortions.

"At the very time when individual demand for family planning is rising all over the world, (the lack of U.S. appropriations) will weaken family planning programmes and increase the use of abortion to avoid unwanted births," she argued. UNFPA officials estimate that the lost funds could have paid for contraception for 870,000 women around the world.

The larger problem may well be a growing lack of trust between the United States and the United Nations, at a time when Washington depends on the world body for help in Kosovo, Iraq and other hot spots.

According to some officials, Clinton had garnered considerable good will at the United Nations when he promised to pay off arrears that have accumulated since Ronald Reagan's 1981-89 presidency and restore UNFPA funding in 1993 after a seven-year suspension. But his failure to
deliver now has overshadowed his earlier efforts, those officials say.