Appropriate Challenge, but--

The United States has called for better accounting of expenditures by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In so doing it has challenged the controversial director general, Edouard Saouma, to explain allegedly improper appointments and to respond to accusations that some funds have been used for political purposes. The challenge is appropriate, and it deserves a prompt and forthright response.

In mounting the challenge the United States is vulnerable to counteraccusations that the inquiry is intended only to divert attention from this country’s failure to pay its full assessments in recent years. The assessments are treaty obligations. Congressional budget cuts and Reagan Administration reductions have left the United States as the U.N. member with the highest arrears not only to FAO but also to the entire U.N. system.

Furthermore, the cuts place at risk some vital FAO programs. Despite the controversial character and administration of the FAO director general, there is general acknowledgement that the portion of the budget in dispute is small by any accounting and, overall, that the organization does good and important work. But the U.S. government has now withheld over the last three years a potentially crippling amount--the equivalent of half the annual budget of the agency.

For the current year the Administration requested $571 million to pay assessments due to 46 international organizations. In the budget compromise for the current year, Congress provided $480 million and continued to tie the reduced appropriations to complicated payment formulas that ensure late payment, further punishing the international programs. In an effort to soften the effect, the Administration has reallocated the funds--cutting sharply into FAO, for example, but increasing funds for the World Health Organization to within $1 million of the full assessment.

Certainly, full funding for WHO is a top priority. The organization works efficiently and effectively, and its relevance to world health is all the more conspicuous now that it is coordinating the global campaign to contain AIDS. But the continued unwillingness of Congress to fund fully all of these organizations erodes both the effectiveness of the agencies themselves and the effort to build respect for a rule of law.

The scrutiny focused on FAO, and on the United Nations itself, is appropriate. But it needs to be kept in proportion. The total funding for all these agencies is a tiny portion of the foreign-policy budget, but a fraction of the annual aid package for Israel and Egypt, for example. In its zealous pursuit of extravagance and mismanagement, the United States needs to exercise caution. It could end up demanding the impossible, given the imperfections inevitable in any multinational institution. And the result could weaken, rather than strengthen, the useful work that each of these 46 agencies performs on behalf of people the world over.