Pay our U.N. dues

The world needs the United Nations, but congressional intransigence is keeping the United States from paying its share of the organization's upkeep.

A Times Editorial

resident Clinton addressed the United Nations on Monday as both the organization's most influential member and biggest freeloader. The United States owes the world body more than $1.5-billion, and every day we fail to meet this obligation brings the United Nations closer to insolvency. Due to an intransigent Congress, the United Nations is being hobbled just when an unstable world needs all the strength the diplomatic body can muster.

As a result of protracted negotiations between the administration, the United Nations and Congress, a compromise bill for dues repayment was reached months ago. Then Congress went back on the deal. The legislation would have unilaterally reduced U.S. arrears by hundreds of millions of dollars and imposed a series of conditions on the money we do pay. The United Nations would have to make further staff and budget cuts; reduce the U.S. pro rata share of the budget, which currently stands at 25 percent and is based on our share of the world's economy; and agree to shelve any idea of a standing peacekeeping force. Such a force is seen by some in Congress as a nascent international army.

Yet, even after wringing hundreds of millions of dollars of concessions from U.N. negotiators, Republicans in Congress weren't satisfied. They insisted on burdening the bill with anti-abortion language that Clinton vowed to veto. As written, the bill keeps U.S. aid from going to international family planning groups that lobby foreign governments to liberalize abortion policies. Congressional leaders like Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms and House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich knew this rider was unacceptable to Clinton, yet insisted on holding U.N. dues hostage to this country's abortion politics.

Helms defended this action in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Monday. Pointing his finger at Clinton, Helms claims that the United Nations' predicament is Clinton's doing and his refusal to accept the abortion rider is a "holier-than-thou charade." But it's Republicans in Congress who are putting on the show. They are feigning concern about the United Nations, an organization for which many in their ranks have little regard and a few actually believe will one day threaten a black helicopter invasion of the United States.

It is their antipathy toward the international body, their unwillingness to meet our financial obligations to the organization, that's the reason for its money problems. Right now, in order to meet operating expenses, the United Nations is failing to reimburse countries for peacekeeping expenses. And these financial woes are eroding its prestige. Why should the world body engender respect if the richest, most powerful nation in the world refuses to support it?

In January our delinquency may have real consequences. Because our arrears to the United Nations are more than our combined contributions for the previous two years, Article 19 of the U.N. Charter automatically suspends our vote in the General Assembly. Although this would not affect our more strategic Security Council status, the suspension of our vote in the main body should be a supreme embarrassment.

The last thing this country needs is to have another partisan domestic battle affect our international standing. The United Nations is an institution that can certainly do with some managerial and bureaucratic reform, but ultimately it is worth funding. We need to pay up.