A World of Troubles Clouds U.N.’s 50th Birthday Bash

UNITED NATIONS — Not long ago, diplomats and bureaucrats had looked forward to the 50th anniversary of the United Nations as a time of celebration and congratulation. They expected reappraisal and reform as well, but counted on dealing with this event in upbeat fashion.

Yet now, as more than 180 presidents, prime ministers and kings converge on New York this weekend for a massive birthday party, a deep depression has descended on the world organization.

Incessant critics deride the United Nations as toothless, incompetent, bloated and useless.

The organization’s roles in Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have clouded perceptions. Whether fairly or not, critics--particularly in the United States--blame the United Nations for the death of U.S. soldiers in a misconceived manhunt in the African nation and for the failure to stop “ethnic cleansing” and aggression in the Balkans.

Moreover, with the United States $1.4 billion in arrears in its payments, the United Nations faces nothing less than a financial catastrophe. Some of the other debtors, such as Russia, simply cannot afford to pay their bills.

But the U.S. shortfall reflects a growing skepticism in Congress that the United Nations is up to the task of mediating the world’s problems. This skepticism worries other diplomats, because they fear that the world organization will be rendered impotent if the United States turns its back on it.

Against this grim backdrop, some U.N. supporters are looking for dramatic, desperate measures to turn things around.

Leadership Questioned

One suggestion circulating in New York and Washington: Persuade Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 72, whether he is the cause of the problem, to step aside when his first five-year term expires at the end of 1996. He is, after all, the personification of the United Nations and, thus, of its failures.

This suggestion even comes from Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a former U.S. assistant secretary of state who is known as a staunch admirer of Boutros-Ghali’s.

Maynes insists that it is unjust to blame Boutros-Ghali for failures in Somalia and Bosnia. But he said in a recent interview: “People become radioactive. Whether they deserve it or not, they have to go. Boutros-Ghali has become radioactive.”

Diego Arria--the former Venezuelan ambassador on the Security Council, who also believes that the secretary general has been used as a scapegoat--observed of Boutros-Ghali: “He has lost the confidence of the general public. We need a new secretary general of immense credibility.”

Not everyone agrees that this would help.

“It is questionable whether a new secretary general would be able to carry the day,” a European ambassador said. “The problem has more to do with a general political malaise in the United States than with the secretary general himself.”

This comment reflects a growing astonishment and frustration among foreign diplomats over the intensity of anti-U.N. attitudes in the U.S. Congress.

The Clinton Administration has proposed that the United Nations head off criticism by accelerating reform: cutting the Secretariat staff, combining and eliminating agencies, lowering the assessment that the United States pays for peacekeeping and adding Japan and Germany as permanent Security Council members.

Underscoring the continual anti-U.N. attacks in the United States, Secretary of State Warren Christopher admonished the General Assembly last month that “the best argument against retreat is further reform.”

Yet many in the U.N. family, though they acknowledge that the U.S. proposals and even more sweeping reforms are necessary, believe that no amount of reform will silence critics in the United States.

A History of Bad Spells

Some supporters of the United Nations content themselves with the knowledge that the organization has suffered through bad spells before in its 50-year history.

In fact, the fortunes of the United Nations have lurched up and down since its beginnings.

The United Nations was created at the end of World War II amid great expectations, quickly snuffed by the Cold War.

Nevertheless, it found a niche dealing with trouble spots such as Israel (at least in the early days), Cyprus, Congo and Suez that were only on the fringes of the Cold War rivalry.

But the fortunes of the United Nations plummeted in the late 1970s when the Third World engulfed it and, with Soviet acquiescence, turned the United Nations into a center of anti-Western, anti-American invective.

Those were the days of Secretary General Kurt Waldheim--later exposed as a member of Nazi youth groups in World War II--and passage by the General Assembly of a resolution equating Zionism with racism. They are still regarded as the nadir days in U.N. history.

Hopes rose anew when the Berlin Wall collapsed, the Cold War ended and the United States induced the Soviet Union and the rest of the Security Council to help turn back Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Then the subsequent frustrations of Somalia and Bosnia dashed many of those who had put their hopes in the organization.

But Edward C. Luck, president emeritus of the United Nations Assn., a private organization of U.N. boosters, does not believe that the world body’s status is as low as it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“Very rarely do Americans now say that the United Nations is a dangerous place,” he said in a recent interview. “The sense that the U.N. is morally and politically undermining American interests and values, you just don’t hear that anymore. . . . I think we have a partisan problem of Republicans using the U.N. to bash the President.”

Still, Luck agreed with Maynes and Arria that an announcement that Boutros-Ghali would forgo a second term would rebound to U.N. advantage, saying: “He ought to choose this opportunity to make clear that a dramatic step is needed. He would get headlines. He could say that the time has come to devote his time to [reform] issues and not to electioneering. . . . And, of course, the members of the Security Council could decide later to keep him anyway.”

When Boutros-Ghali took office at the beginning of 1992, he insisted that he would serve for only one term.

But, after a few years in office, he changed his mind and said he might seek reelection, if his health permitted.

His relations with U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright and others in the Clinton Administration have been prickly. There has been speculation that the United States would wield its Security Council veto to prevent Boutros-Ghali’s reelection.

But James P. Rubin, Albright’s adviser and spokesman, said the Administration has reached no decision on a second Boutros-Ghali term.

He noted, however, that Albright had criticized Boutros-Ghali for spending too much time as a policy-maker and not enough as an administrator and a diplomat.

Used as Scapegoat

Many U.N. diplomats and outside analysts fault the Administration for mounting an inadequate defense of the United Nations, even using it as a scapegoat to divert attention from lapses in U.S. foreign policy.

Maynes said many congressional Republicans are part of the small percentage of Americans who have never accepted the United Nations. In a Los Angeles Times poll last April, shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, nearly one-quarter of respondents agreed that the United Nations “poses a threat to the constitutional rights enjoyed by the average American.”

“These people have always believed that the U.N. jeopardizes American interests,” Maynes said. “Along comes the Clinton Administration, and it saddles the U.N. falsely with the Somalia and Bosnia failures. . . . This confirms the worst right-wing nightmare.”

Turning around the image of the United Nations in the United States requires not just a new secretary general but also a halt to what Maynes regards as the Administration’s “excessive” criticism of the U.N. bureaucracy and the appointment of influential Republicans to key foreign policy posts involving the United Nations. Besides its image problems, the United Nations is wrestling with its worst-ever financial crisis.

“Emergency measures to restore financial health are needed,” Boutros-Ghali told finance ministers at meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington earlier this month. “If action is not taken quickly, human suffering will increase. People will die. The financial crisis of the United Nations is now affecting the very foundations of the world organization.”

At September’s end, 70 of the 185 U.N. members were behind in payment of dues--a total in arrears of $3.3 billion.

The United States owed more than 40% of the total debt--$527 million for the regular U.N. budget and $906 million for peacekeeping missions.

Part of the problem is that the United Nations assesses members on Jan. 1, but the U.S. Congress appropriates funds for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1; this means that the United States is always months behind in payments. Atop that, Congress usually appropriates less than is needed, sometimes to punish the United Nations, sometimes to “encourage” cost-cutting at the world body.

Meantime, the United Nations lacks the authority to borrow money or charge interest on late payments. The United Nations now owes $900 million to countries contributing troops as peacekeepers and is unable to consider any new peacekeeping missions.

A Call for Reform

The crises over image and finances have diverted attention from reforms that many diplomats believed would be considered and perhaps even implemented in the 50th anniversary year.

Expansion of the Security Council may be the most obvious. The 15-member group now follows the model set at the end of World War II, when countries regarded as victors were awarded permanent seats. They went to the United States, the Soviet Union (Russia now holds the seat), Britain, France and China. But many governments now agree that two of the defeated wartime powers--Germany and Japan--deserve permanent seats because of their economic power and influence.

But the Third World insists that some of its governments deserve permanent seats. There is not full agreement on which. Should it be India, Pakistan or Indonesia? Nigeria, Egypt or South Africa? Mexico, Brazil or Argentina? Until compromises can be worked out, no expansion seems likely.

U.N. supporters also had hoped a system could be worked out so the organization’s peacekeepers could respond swiftly to emergencies.

There is a widespread feeling, for example, that tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives could have been saved from an ethnic genocide in Rwanda if the United Nations had sent troops in quickly.

A loose, embryonic system exists in which some governments have earmarked troops and equipment for swift U.N. use when needed. That system could be strengthened and formalized.

Some analysts, including former Undersecretary General Brian Urquhart, have proposed a U.N. legion--a small standing force of volunteers that the secretary general, under authority of the Security Council, could deploy in an emergency.

But such ideas are pipe dreams as long as there are powerful Americans wary of giving the secretary general any more powers.

And no U.S. government will allow a strengthened military hand for the United Nations until its woeful image is turned around.

* RELATED STORIES: A10, A13

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Celebrating the 50th

Highlights of the U.N. 50th anniversary celebration.

TONIGHT

New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani hosts dinner for world leaders.

SUNDAY

U.N. session formally opens. Among speakers are President Clinton, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and Cuban President Fidel Castro. Heads of state and government attend luncheon hosted by Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and dinner hosted by Clinton.

MONDAY

Meetings feature speech by South African President Nelson Mandela, among others. Clinton and Yeltsin hold summit. Luncheon hosted by Boutros-Ghali. Spouses luncheon hosted by Leia Boutros-Ghali and Donna Hanover Giuliani. In the evening, buffet dinner, reception and a concert by the New York Philharmonic.

TUESDAY

Meetings feature speeches by leaders of China, Liberia and Bosnia, among others. Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin hold summit.