U.S. Officials Cheer Adoption of Fiscal Reform by United Nations

U.S. Ambassador Vernon A. Walters declared Saturday that the “impossible has been achieved” with the adoption of the first fiscal reform by the General Assembly since the founding of the United Nations in 1945.

The Assembly accepted a U.S.-backed package without a vote at its closing session late Friday in what Walters called “an extraordinary demonstration of consensus.” The main item in the package--creation of a budget committee in which the major financial contributors will have the dominant voice--was the principal contested issue during the assembly session that began Sept. 16.

The United States had created a crisis in the organization by withholding $110 million of its $210-million annual assessment in an attempt to win better budget control.

Will Enforce Budget Ceiling

The final accord gave new power to the 21-member Committee for Program and Coordination, enabling that group to set a budget ceiling to which the assembly is committed. Other parts of the package, originally proposed by a committee of 18 experts, called for a 15% cut in the 14,000-member U.N. staff and sharp curbs on travel and conference expenses. Such curbs have already been initiated by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

Alan L. Keyes, assistant secretary of state for international organizations, who took part in the final negotiations, joined Walters at a Saturday news conference, declaring, “Our success has to be credited to the policies and approaches of this (Reagan) Administration.”

Walters said that President Reagan had personally intervened, writing letters to heads of government who resisted the budget reforms.

Asked if the United States will now restore the withheld $110 million, the loss of which put the world organization on a hand-to-mouth basis, Walters and Keyes said the Reagan Administration will seek full restitution of the funds in a supplemental appropriations request to Congress in January, but they cautioned that the decision rests with the new Congress that will be in session then.

“Our belief that we can expect cooperation is not pure speculation, however,” Keyes said.

The bulk of the U.S. cutback was triggered by adoption of an appropriations bill amendment offered by Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) that called for funds to be withheld until major financial contributors had a greater say in U.N. fiscal matters.

Although Kassebaum originally sought a system of voting weighted in favor of the major contributors--something that would have required a U.N. Charter change, which would be virtually impossible to achieve--she later indicated that a budget committee strongly influenced by the big donors would satisfy her concerns.

‘Two-Way Veto’

Asked what guarantee Washington has that Third World nations accustomed to dominating all aspects of U.N. business will carry out their side of the new bargain by not trying to inflate the budget from the assembly floor, Walters said: “The political agreement we made we expect will be sustained. It’s a two-way veto--you have to negotiate a consensus, and if we can’t, we’ll be back where we were.”

“Everyone is going to be under enormous pressure to make the system work,” Keyes said.

Walters added that “we got a great deal of cooperation from the Soviet Union, because they are a major contributor and they are interested in efficiency.”

Walters said that a second major U.S. achievement during the assembly session was the introduction of a “detailed indictment of Cuba’s shocking human rights record,” although the U.S. resolution was not brought to a vote. “For too many people, the only two dictatorships in Latin America are Chile and Paraguay,” Walters said. “They forget the real ones--Cuba and Nicaragua.”