U.S. Pays U.N.--Finally

President Reagan’s belated decision to pay the American debts to the United Nations is a “most positive development,” to quote the understatement of U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

The immediate payment of $188 million will rescue the organization from terminating operations. Battered by the continued refusal of the United States to pay its full share and Washington’s insistence since 1983 on paying whatever it paid late, the United Nations would have run out of cash in the next 60 days. It has met its bills for two years through the generosity of some members, like Britain and Canada, willing to pay early and by draining the last dollar out of its two emergency reserve funds.

There is nothing heroic about the American decision. It comes a year after the Soviet Union agreed to pay its debts and to support fully the regular and peacekeeping budgets. It merely implements what has been a treaty obligation all along, ending a flagrant violation of international law.

President Reagan and Congress both have been party to bashing the United Nations. Led by Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), Congress has restricted funding of the United Nations as a device to pry concessions on budget and administrative reforms. The organization will be the better for the reforms. But the rule of law was not enhanced by the use of illegal procedures to force the issue. Even now the White House is still complaining that the reforms are incomplete.

Of course the reforms are incomplete. By its very nature, the world organization will always be defective. The requirement for an international civil service invites inefficiency. The open global debate in which all nations have an equal voice encourages excesses and abuses. But those inefficiencies and abuses should not be allowed to conceal the extraordinary importance of the processes of the Security Council and the General Assembly as global forums, and the relevance of the specialized agencies in addressing the profound problems of the developing nations and the majority of the world population that is struggling for survival in those nations. There simply is no more effective or cheaper instrument of foreign policy for the United States to use in advancing world security.

Reagan has proposed a multiyear compact to pay up all that is owed. Good. The quicker the better. The issue is not simply the survival of the organization. There is a need for reinvigoration that can come about only through the restoration of full funding--and full funding that is paid on time at the beginning of the financial year for the United Nations and its specialized agencies.