U.N. tightens its belt

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 15

U.N. tightens its belt

NZPA-Reuter New York

Washington’s insistence that the United Nations spend less and manage better was proving to be effective but painful, diplomats said.

The Secretary-General, Mr Javier Perez de Cuellar, who has had to reduce travel to save cash, went to Geneva recently to meet United Nations agencies. But several staff who were to have gone along got eleventh-hour orders to stay in New York. “No funds,” an official said. The staff union has said it fears a cut of up to 25 per cent in the 8000strong New York Secretariat and possibly even payless pay-days before a new, trimmer United Nations emerges. Ignoring the argument that United Nations assessments are an obligation under international law, the United States reduced its contribution unilaterally, so far this year paying only SUS4B.7 million of its $U5295.7 million dues and arrears for a total United Nations budget of more than SUSBOO million. The American assessment, 25 per cent, is the biggest by far. Next is the

Soviet Union 11.82. Japan, 10.84, and West Germany, 8.26 per cent A total of 121 of the 159 United Nations members are assessed at less than onefifth of one per cent most of them paying as little as one-hundredth of one per cent

Forty-seven states paid nothing in 1986, and 65 others paid less than they owed, “the financial crisis remains extremely acute,” said Mr Perez de Cuellar.

He announced long ago that the working capital fund was exhausted and all this year, officials say, the organisation has been working virtually hand-to-mouth.

Although many see the United States to be the cause of the crisis, the Soviet Union also considers the United Nations to be too costly. Such fully paid-up members as West Germany, Britain, and Canada say United Nations spending has got out of hand.

It is generally accepted, that politics is behind it and if more members were more accommodating to the Americans and less inclined to vote against them things might

not have become half so bad.

“Frustration and anger at the United Nations is real,” Dante FascelL Chairman of the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee told a United Nations advocacy group that appealed for his help as a known friend of the organisation.

“A fair translation of our policy is that “Uncle Sam is tired of being a patsy and all of you in the rest of the world step up and take care of it*,” he said recently.

Nonetheless, American leaders, including the President, Mr Ronald Reagan, and the Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, have repeatedly reaffirmed support for the United Nations.

A senior United Nations official said, “That is all very nice, but the United Nations doesn’t have a constituency in the country where it counts.” Some United Nations officials concerned by the extent of American antipathy said they still believed that in the long run a “leaner, meaner” world body was a good thing.