U.N. Facing Budget Crisis at Start of 41st Session

Because of reductions in the U.S. contribution, the 41st General Assembly being convened today will confront the most serious budget crisis in U.N. history.

The General Assembly will also have to face the question of the Soviet Union’s use of its nationals, employed by the U.N. Secretariat as well as by the Soviet Mission, for espionage purposes. The FBI’s arrest of Gennady F. Zakharov, a physicist employed by the U.N. Secretariat, on espionage charges is believed to have brought on the arrest in Moscow of Nicholas Daniloff, the U.S. News & World Report correspondent.

World leaders will arrive next week for the traditional general debate, and the leadoff speaker Monday will be President Reagan.

But the overriding concern at this session will be financial matters. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said in his annual report:

“This year the very operation of the United Nations has been placed in jeopardy because, with reserves depleted, it has been confronted with the likelihood of the withholding by the principal contributing state of a substantial portion of its assessed contribution to the regular budget. Without a strong and reliable financial foundation, anchored in respect for the Charter, the United Nations can be crippled.”

Payment Cut to $168 Million

The first U.S. blow came last year with an amendment to a Senate bill by Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), which mandated a reduction of the 1986 U.S. contribution to 20% from 25% of the basic budget of $841 million unless the General Assembly adopted a voting system giving greater weight to major contributors. So far, no method of satisfying this provision has been devised.

The Kassebaum amendment would reduce the U.S. payment to $168.3 million from $210.3 million, but none of this money is to paid until after the beginning of the U.S. fiscal year on Oct. 1. Further reductions, including the still-uncalculated effect of the Gramm-Rudman budget restrictions, could slice the ultimate figure almost in half--to about $84 million.

Although the U.S. action has exacerbated the picture, the United Nations has been on a downward financial path since the Congo peacekeeping operation of the mid-1960s, when Moscow and the French government of President Charles de Gaulle both refused to pay their share of the costs.

Other member states followed their example--South Africa stopped paying when it was voted out of the General Assembly in 1974--and the United Nations’ financial status has become progressively worse.

This year, the organization may not be able to pay its employees after October, despite desperate economy measures taken by Perez de Cuellar as soon as it became apparent that there would be a reduction in the U.S. contribution. Among the economy measures was a severe restriction on overtime work.

Despite a claimed saving of $60 million in 1986, critics of the United Nations maintain that Perez de Cuellar has only skimmed the surface of the organization’s fat. According to a study by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the $841-million basic budget does not include the associated voluntary agencies and related activities of the United Nations, which will push total spending for 1986 to $4.25 billion.

Of the overall amount, the United States will pay about 25%, the Heritage Foundation estimates, while the Soviet Union will pay only 5% and 80 Third World countries that make up a majority of the 159 members will pay less than 1% of the overall budget.

The Heritage Foundation study, maintaining that pay and pension benefits at the United Nations have gotten out of hand, called for trimming salaries to the level of the U.S. Civil Service. It also recommended slashing the ranks of undersecretaries and assistant secretaries general, whose salaries are in the $100,000-a-year range.

State Department officials have expressed hope that the U.S. cuts will be reversed, but diplomats here took this to be more of a political gesture in advance of Reagan’s assembly speech than a realistic rescue effort.

A more prevalent fear here is that Congress may impose yet more restrictions on U.S. funds rather than rescind earlier actions.

Members of Congress are preparing legislation aimed at cracking down on espionage by U.N. workers and strictly enforcing the rule that staff members must be career employees. The Soviet Union and other Communist member states permit their nationals to serve only for limited periods, a violation of the organization’s principles but a practice accepted by the Secretariat over the years. Soviet Bloc employees usually have to live in national compounds and turn in their dollar salaries, thereby ensuring loyalty to their government rather than to the United Nations.

Other U.S. legislators are reported to be drafting legislation that would curtail the number of Soviet Bloc diplomats in their governments’ U.N. missions. This is an area less subject to U.S. pressure, because the agreement with the United States under which the U.N. headquarters and foreign missions are located here has the force of a treaty. The United States has in the past exercised its right to protect national security by demanding the departure of U.N. diplomats caught spying.