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US
Congress moves to squeeze UN
By
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - In a move virtually
certain to add to strains between the US Congress
and the United Nations, the International
Relations Committee (HIRC) of the House of
Representatives on Wednesday approved a sweeping
bill that, if passed into law, will require
Washington to withhold up to half of assessed US
contributions to the world body unless it
implements specific reforms.
Among other
"reforms", The United Nations Reform Act of 2005,
which is expected to be approved on the House
floor next week, would require the UN to fund most
of its programs through voluntary contributions,
rather than mandatory dues from its 191
member-states, and enable Washington to pick and
choose those programs it wished to fund.
It would also require the UN to set up a
number of new oversight boards to investigate the
UN bureaucracy and specific agencies, as well as
adopt new rules that would bar alleged
human-rights violators from serving on the UN
Human Rights Commission. And it would withhold US
support for new or expanded UN peacekeeping
operations until specific reforms were
implemented.
"No observer, be they passionate
supporter or dismissive critic, can pretend that
the current structure and operations of the UN
represent an acceptable standard," HIRC chairman
Henry Hyde, the act's main author, said on
Wednesday.
"This act will usher in reforms
that both Republican and Democratic
administrations alike have long called for,
including a more focused and accountable budget,
one that should reflect the true priorities of the
organization, shorn of duplicate, ineffective and
outdated programs," he noted.
The reform
act drew immediate criticism from UN defenders,
including former senator Timothy Wirth, president
of the independent United Nations Foundation.
"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.
"This is like trying to force
a bank to renegotiate your home mortgage by
refusing to make your monthly payments," he noted.
"The Hyde UN Reform Act will only further
exacerbate our isolation in the world community,
at a time when we need allies," warned Don Kraus,
executive vice president of Citizens for Global
Solutions, a Washington lobby formerly known as
the World Federalist Association. "The [George W]
Bush administration will be far more effective at
achieving its goals if it doesn't alienate
potential allies."
The administration,
which has generally opposed withholding dues to
the UN, has not taken a formal position on the
bill, which, if passed by the House, will then
have to be taken up later this summer by the
Senate. The House Republican leadership, which has
strongly supported the bill, is considered more to
the right than either the Senate or the
administration.
In approving the bill, the
HIRC rebuffed a Democratic substitute, which
included the same specific provisions but gave the
secretary of state discretion to decide how much
money could be withheld from the UN and specific
programs and agencies.
The bill comes amid
growing hostility toward the UN, particularly
among Republican lawmakers, dating back to the
Security Council's refusal to back the Bush
administration's decision to go to war in Iraq in
March 2003. Secretary General Kofi Annan's
denunciation of that war as "illegal" under the UN
Charter during last year's US presidential
campaign also infuriated many Republicans.
In addition, recent revelations regarding
possible corruption by senior UN officials - the
subject of full-blown Senate hearings - and
Annan's son's involvement in the Iraq Oil for Food
program, as well as sexual abuse of children and
women by some UN peacekeepers, have added fuel to
the anti-UN fire, which has been eagerly stoked by
key neo-conservative and right-wing media as well
as leaders of the Christian Right who have long
regarded the world body with suspicion.
Hyde, however, insisted that his bill is
being put forward in a "constructive spirit"
designed to "strengthen the UN and enable it to
meet its mandate in ... facilitating diplomacy,
mediating disputes, monitoring the peace, and
feeding the hungry".
Some of the
proposals, including barring membership in the UN
Human Rights Commission to governments with bad
rights records, echo recommendations made by Annan
himself in his own comprehensive reform agenda,
"In Larger Freedom: For Development, Security, and
Human Rights, for All."
Kraus, however,
warned that the unilateral and threatening way
Hyde's proposals were being presented - and the
resentment that it was likely to cause - was
likely to undercut Annan's own reform efforts.
Hyde's bill, for example, would
unilaterally reduce Washington's share of the UN's
regular biannual budget from 25% to 22%. It also
mandates that once the budget is approved, it
cannot be increased without consensus agreement
(giving Washington or any other government an
effective veto), and, in any case, cannot increase
beyond 10%, thus depriving the world body of its
ability to cope with unanticipated emergencies.
It also calls for the shifting of 18
programs, including economic and social affairs,
least-developed countries, trade and development,
refugee protection, international drug control,
and Palestinian refugees, from the regular
assessed budget to voluntarily funded programs,
thus giving "all countries more control over how
to best invest their contributions," said Hyde. If
this reform is not adopted, the bill calls for
Washington to redirect its contributions to
"priority areas, which include internal oversight,
human rights, and humanitarian assistance".
The UN Public Information Office and
international conferences are also targeted for
major across-the-board reductions, beginning with
a 10% cut for 2007 followed by a 20% cut in 2008.
The bill mandates the creation of an
independent oversight board and an ethics office
with broad investigative authority over suspected
mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and other
kinds of wrongdoing within the UN, its agencies
and peacekeeping operations.
Countries
subject to sanctions by the Security Council or
country-specific human-rights resolutions would be
banned from serving on the UN Human Rights
Commission. In a bow to Israel, the bill also
mandates that no UN human rights body could have a
standing agenda item that related only to one
country.
Similarly, the bill calls for
major reforms in the International Atomic Energy
Agency; among them, the establishment of two new
sub-bodies that have been sought by the Bush
administration. Additionally, under the bill the
US must withhold funds from treaty-monitoring
bodies in which the US is not a signatory to the
underlying treaty or protocol.
Failure to
implement any of the specific mandates would
result in the withholding of half of the assessed
US obligations, which amounted to US$438 million
this year.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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