U.N. Health Agency Averts Crisis, Postpones Its Decision on PLO

The World Health Organization averted financial chaos Friday by postponing for a year a decision on whether to admit the PLO as a full member state.

The World Health Organization’s annual governing assembly, facing a U.S. threat to cut off its dues if the Palestine Liberation Organization were made a member, voted 83-47 to defer its verdict on the application until a meeting next May. There were 19 abstentions.

A Soviet delegate said his country--normally a staunch ally of the PLO--supports its membership in the WHO but decided to try to avoid confrontation.

Diplomats saw the vote as a significant defeat for PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who had picked the WHO as the first in a series of U.N. agencies in which to seek membership to try to increase recognition of the self-proclaimed state of Palestine.

WHO Director General Hiroshi Nakajima, a Japanese physician, had warned that his organization would be destroyed if the PLO were admitted.

Nakajima drew angry accusations of bias from Arab countries when he warned that the loss of U.S. funds would be “a bigger danger than AIDS.”

U.S. contributions to the WHO budget amount to $75 million to $80 million a year, or 25% of the total. The United States also makes by far the largest voluntary contributions to special programs to fight fatal childhood and tropical diseases as well as acquired immune deficiency syndrome, all of which cost around $300 million to $350 million annually.

Calling on the delegates before the vote not to jeopardize the 166-nation body’s future, Nakajima told them, “That future is now in your hands.”

The vote was on a compromise resolution he had crafted, which in exchange for deferral had expressed “the hope that the Palestinian people will be fully represented within the World Health Organization by their legitimate representatives.”

It also referred to the request of Palestine--not the PLO--to join, and called for increased assistance to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.

A Canadian delegate said after voting that the assembly had “avoided disrupting the sustained great work of the WHO,” though like some other Western nations, Canada objected to some of the language in the text.

The assembly had decided to vote in a secret ballot, a move favored by many countries to free poorer nations from the fear of losing Arab aid in retaliation for a vote against the PLO.

The U.N. General Assembly decided last December to upgrade the PLO to “Palestine” in U.N. bodies, and PLO officials sat behind a Palestine plaque as an observer delegation at the assembly.

The Palestine National Council named Arafat president of the state of Palestine, and the PLO claims the rights of statehood.

But Western nations resist the claim, asserting that it does not control the territory of Palestine and therefore lacks a crucial criterion for statehood.

Less openly, some also worried that if Palestine were allowed in then Israel might be expelled, much as Taiwan was driven out when China was admitted.

Arafat charged that the United States used “blackmail” to defeat the PLO application.

Washington, in turn, argued that PLO admission would disastrously politicize the WHO and would be “a poison dart for the entire U.N. system.”