SUNS 4298 Friday 9 October 1998


UNITED NATIONS: US INFLUENCE APPROACHES NADIR

United Nations, Oct 8 (IPS/Farhan Haq) -- U.S. officials at the United Nations are talking loudly, as ever, about the importance of the world body in world crises ranging from Kosovo to Iraq, but
diplomats argue that Washington's influence here has never been lower.

The once-dominant U.S. presence at the United Nations is now akin to a prominent absence. Washington has no permanent U.N. representative, has not paid its outstanding dues and, if the dues are not paid by year's end, will have no vote in the 185-nation General Assembly.

The steady decline of American influence at the United Nations has caused some members of the U.S. diplomatic mission to grumble that the Republican-led Congress is leading the country into a
diplomatic catastrophe.

Some Republicans, said one senior official, "just want to destroy the United Nations."

For the past three years, U.S. diplomats have tried to downplay signs that the Republicans in Congress - such as Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jesse Helms, an ardent U.N. opponent - are hurting President Bill Clinton's objectives at the world body. Yet, with no end to the dues standoff in sight and with U.S. prestige dramatically lower, U.S. diplomats are now vocal that partisan politics has hindered their work.

The list of problems blamed on the Republicans is long, and steadily increasing. Language attached to a bill designed to repay part of the more than $1.5 billion in unpaid U.S. dues, which would
prohibit U.S. funding for organisations that advocate abortions abroad, has all but ensured that the dues will not be repaid soon, the officials noted.

"We were disappointed this year that the legislation passed by Congress to enable the United States to pay its U.N. arrears included provisions on international family planning that were
totally unacceptable to the administration," argued Ambassador Peter Burleigh, the ranking U.S. diplomat at the mission, recently. "The president has repeatedly voiced his determination that the
United States must start repaying its U.N. arrears."

However it may be too late. U.N. rules automatically deny a country the right to vote in the General Assembly once its unpaid dues equal two years' worth of its assessed responsibility; Washington
will reach that mark this year, and could therefore be in violation of its minimum requirement to keep its vote by Dec. 31.

Since the United States is supposed to pay one quarter of the more than $1 billion U.N. regular budget, as well as 31% of peacekeeping costs, the non-payment is also leading to a budget crunch that gets worse each year, noted U.N. Under-Secretary-General Joseph Connor.

"As a result of the uncertainty of expected payments from the United States, we once again project being obliged to cross-borrow from peacekeeping cash to fund the regular budget cash needs during substantially all of October, November and December," Connor, a former top executive at the Price Waterhouse firm, warned Wednesday.

Connor said that by the end of September, unpaid U.N. assessments exceeded $2.5 billion, with the bulk of the shortfall coming from the United States.
Despite the looming possibility that the arrears may finally cause the United States into a humiliating loss of its General Assembly vote, many Republicans seem unworried. Marc Thiessen, spokesman for Helms, argued recently, "It would be political suicide for the General Assembly to take away the U.S. vote. We're not going to go to any great length to prevent it from happening."

Another Republican official argued that losing the vote in the Assembly, which passes rulings that are not legally binding, would be of little consequence since Washington will continue to hold
veto power in the more crucial 15-nation Security Council.

U.S. and U.N. officials, however, contend that there have been significant losses to Washington's interests as a result of the wrangling with Republicans. The decline in U.S. prestige here has
hindered Washington's efforts to secure agreement on a number of key concerns, from its hardline stance on maintaining sanctions on Iraq and Libya to its current push for the possible use of force in
Kosovo.

The United States goes into those battles with Burleigh - who is the second-in-charge of the U.S. mission - as its senior official here, thanks to a series of snags that has delayed the confirmation
of its designated U.N. permanent representative, Richard Holbrooke.

Holbrooke's nomination has been held up, with the Senate seeking more time to investigate anonymous allegations that he improperly maintained government contacts when dealing with private Swiss firms and did not state rent-free use of a Swiss residence in his financial disclosures to Congress.

It is now unlikely that the Senate will confirm Holbrooke until early 1999 at the soonest, leaving Burleigh in charge for the next three months. Clinton, however, remains upbeat about the veteran
diplomat's chances of eventually being confirmed, telling the Council on Foreign Relations last month that "I hope, if we can overcome the inertia of Congress, he will soon be a member of the
team again".

Ironically, the partisan bickering has helped boost Clinton's image at the United Nations slightly even as it has weakened the United States' hand overall. As Jeff Laurenti, executive director for
policy at the United Nations Association of the USA, noted, many diplomats believe that Clinton, now being targeted for possible impeachment by Congress, is being victimised by the same
politicians who are against the United Nations.

As a result, Laurenti said, Clinton received an unusual standing ovation when he addressed the General Assembly two weeks ago, at the height of his troubles over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Even more significantly, the ovation occurred even before the president spoke.

Afterward, however, diplomats responded to Clinton's uninspired speech on terrorism with "only mild applause," Laurenti observed. The United States may be lucky to receive even that polite but
muted support in the months ahead.