inside the glass house

US bill seeks to slash UN fund
NEW YORK - When UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was asked to respond to an impending US threat to cut off funds to the world body, he told reporters last week: "I hope it will not happen. I don't think holding back contributions sends the right message, and it might be counter-productive."

Clearly, the 60-year-old world body is badly in need of restructuring -- and even its glass-fronted headquarters in New York is on the verge of crumbling crying out for much-needed renovations and refurbishing.

But a threat to hold back funds is not the answer to the problem. The US is perhaps the only member state in a 191-member organisation that has consistently used its economic clout to browbeat the world body into possible submission.

But even if it does, the organisation will survive -- as did the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) long after the US cut off funds to protest its policies.

If the US decides to withhold its assessed dues to the UN, it could continue to pile up its already accumulated debts, primarily due to delayed payments, although member states are expected to pay their dues in full, without conditions and on time.

The European Union once proposed that countries owing money to the world body should not only be shut out of UN jobs but also barred from bidding on UN contracts for goods and services. But the proposal never got off the ground.

The 1945 San Francisco conference which drafted the UN Charter rejected a proposal that called for a member in arrears to forfeit its seat in the Security Council.

Article 19 of the charter says that a member state shall lose its voting rights in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years.

But despite its accumulated debts, the US has continued to skillfully avoid the threshold that will deprive the country of its voting rights. If passed, last week's legislation in the US House of Representatives will require Washington to withhold up to half of assessed US contributions to the world body unless it implements specific reforms.

Additionally, the US will also deprive funds to treaty-monitoring bodies in which Washington is not a signatory to the underlying treaty or protocol. The bill, titled the United Nations Reform Act of 2005, will also require the UN to fund most of its programmes through voluntary contributions, rather than mandatory dues from its 191 member-states, and enable Washington to pick and choose those programmes it wished to fund.

According to the proposed legislation, the world body is also being called upon to set up a number of new oversight boards to investigate the UN bureaucracy and specific agencies. The bill calls for new rules to bar human rights violators from serving on the UN Human Rights Commission.

Although the ultimate goal seems altruistic, the means to achieve it is already under question. A former US Senator, Timothy Wirth, currently president of the Washington-based United Nations Foundation, thinks the proposed legislation is far off the mark.

"We are very disappointed in the approval of a bill that will most likely trigger new UN arrears for the US," he said. "The last time the US withheld funds, it led to a huge debt to the UN and inhibited our ability to lead within the institution."

Providing a very apt characterisation of the US threat, Wirth said: "This is like trying to force a bank to renegotiate your home mortgage by refusing to make your monthly payments."

The author of the bill, Representative Henry Hyde, thinks he is on the right track. "No observer, be they passionate supporter or dismissive critic, can pretend that the current structure and operations of the UN represent an acceptable standard," he said last week.

The sustained campaign against the UN -- including calls for the resignation of Annan over the oil-for-food scandal -- may really be triggered by sinister motives. Both the Secretary-General and the UN have come under persistent right wing Republican attacks ever since Annan publicly declared that the US war against Iraq was "illegal."

Although Annan was dead on target, right wing conservatives in the US gave it a political twist because he made the statement in the midst of the US presidential campaign last year putting President Bush on the defensive. The bottom line is that any Secretary-General who refuses to play ball with the world's only superpower will sooner or later find himself in the political doghouse.

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