Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 25, 1995 TAG: 9510250085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN M. GOSHKO THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS LENGTH: Medium
There was no doubt about that consensus by the time the 96 speakers, addressing increasingly empty seats in the cavernous General Assembly chamber, ticked down to the final speech by Roberto Herrera Caceres, secretary general of the obscure Central American Integration System.
But when it came to specifying what the reforms should be or how the financial crisis could be solved, the presidents, prime ministers and others who spoke here over the past three days in the largest assemblage of world leaders ever, offered differing and frequently contradictory proposals about what the United Nations must do to survive.
On the financial side, the members, seemingly without exception, fixed the principal blame on the United States for its continuing failure to pay its arrears of $1.3 billion in budget dues and peacekeeping assessments. That is more than a third of the roughly $3 billion owed to the United Nations.
No one had any workable way to make the United States pay up, however, at a time when the Republican-controlled Congress views U.N. appropriations as a prime target for cost cutting.
Even President Clinton, whose Sunday speech opened the celebration, could say only that he is ``working'' with Congress to seek a solution. That was widely interpreted here as an embarrassed admission that Clinton has failed to breach congressional hostility toward the United Nations.
If that situation remains unchanged, it would be devastating for the U.N.'s ability to function effectively. But it also could deal a damaging blow to the credibility of U.S. claims to leadership in world affairs.
Clinton's speech contained no grand vision. Instead, he emphasized what many diplomats here say privately was a narrow and parochial call for combating terrorists and drug traffickers such as the Cali cartel. The diplomats said he appeared to be appealing to domestic concerns and trying to avoid too close an identification with the United Nations at a time when its reputation has been tarnished by the perception that it bungled its peacekeeping missions in Somalia and Bosnia.
However, several diplomatic sources, who asked not to be identified, said that was a mistake. For all the United Nations' shortcomings, they noted, other governments want to see the organization survive, and they do not believe that is possible without continued moral and financial backing from its richest and most powerful member. Clinton's ability to make good on America's U.N. obligations is being watched by other countries as a test of whether he can be counted on to deter the United States from sliding into isolationism and exert strong leadership in future international crises, the sources said.
Other leaders, in their speeches, mainly ignored Clinton's remarks. No one offered even a perfunctory second to his call to arms against the Cali cartel.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin praised the U.S.-Russian relationship during a Monday meeting with Clinton. But in his U.N. speech, Yeltsin strenuously opposed U.S. proposals to give NATO the lead role in policing a hoped-for Bosnia peace agreement and to confer NATO membership on East European countries.
Similarly, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who met with Clinton Tuesday, used his U.N. speech to give Washington a thinly disguised warning not to use ``freedom, democracy and human rights'' as excuses to interfere in China's internal affairs.
Even such close U.S. allies as Britain and France were sharply critical of Washington's failure to pay its U.N. bills.
One area where Clinton won support from leaders of other industrial nations was in his call for trimming the size of the U.N. bureaucracy, reducing waste and adopting a less ambitious list of priorities.
But these are not the kinds of reforms envisioned by the poor countries. They want a greater share of authority within the system, particularly on the Security Council, whose five permanent, veto-wielding members - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - have the power to control most of the U.N.'s political decisions.
There is a general sense that Japan and Germany, the two biggest U.N. financial contributors after the United States, should be given permanent council seats. But the developing countries will not agree unless permanent seats also are given to representatives of Africa, Latin America and South Asia. Progress toward expanding the council has been stymied by disagreements about which countries should get the new seats, whether they should have veto powers and how many can be added without making the council too unwieldy.
by CNB