UNESCO’s Problems Grow as Former Donors Become Supplicants : International aid: U.S. becomes comfortable on the outside looking in and declines to rejoin the U.N. organization.

It will be an uncertain new world order for UNESCO when it opens its biannual general meeting in Paris next week.

An ideological battleground during the Cold War, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization lost its main Western support in 1984-85 when the United States and Britain pulled out, charging that the organization was mired in mismanagement and Marxist-Leninist bias.

But it may have been dealt an even tougher blow this year with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Long UNESCO’s most faithful financial supporter, the Soviet Union for the first time this year failed to pay its bill, sending chills down the corridors of the Paris headquarters on the Place de Fontenoy.

UNESCO chief Federico Mayor said he will cushion the financial blow--estimated at $11 million, more than 10% of the budget--by eliminating 62 high-paying consultants’ jobs.

“It is true that the Soviet Union has not paid so far,” Mayor said at a recent luncheon with journalists. “But I want to pay respect to the Soviet Union. Before this year they always paid on time, unlike many other countries.” Mayor said that new Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin has pledged to pay at least some of the Soviet tab before the end of the year.

But the problem is complicated by the fact that the Soviet Union and other former East Bloc donor states have joined Third World countries in line for scientific and cultural assistance from the severely strained organization.

“All those countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have become demanders,” said Marie Bernard-Meunier, Canada’s ambassador to the organization. “They will be asking a lot of UNESCO.”

In his three years as UNESCO secretary general, Mayor has concentrated his efforts on luring the United States and Britain back to the fold by shifting the emphasis to nonpolitical programs such as the eradication of illiteracy, preservation of cultural sites and environmental causes.

But an April, 1990, report to Congress delivered by Secretary of State James A. Baker III sharply accused the organization of mismanagement and waste. Among the main complaints was that 80% of UNESCO’s staff live and work in Paris, often enjoying high salaries and generous housing allowances. Only 30% of the organization’s $190-million annual budget ever made it to the field, the Baker report concluded.

The United States continues to maintain an observer mission at the Paris headquarters. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jackie Wolcott will attend the Oct. 15-Nov. 8 general conference at which the organization is expected to adopt a Japanese management restructuring proposal.

Despite the geopolitical changes wrought by the end of the Cold War, the Americans are sticking to a hard-line policy toward UNESCO. Before it withdrew in 1984, the United States supplied more than 25% of the total budget, approximately $50 million.

“The U.S. policy toward UNESCO remains unchanged,” a State Department official said this week. “To date, concrete reform has been limited and does not merit the return of the United States to an organization that would cost approximately $50 million a year in assessed dues.”

However, UNESCO officials see some hope in the fact that eight auditors with the General Accounting Office, dispatched by the U.S. Congress, are currently in Paris poring through the books at the glass-walled headquarters building. “This is the first time since 1984 they have been here,” Mayor announced hopefully at the luncheon meeting with journalists.

The United States, however, has grown comfortable with its influential role outside the organization. The Baker report last year baldly stated that Washington has more clout on the outside, where its opinion is wooed and solicited as U.N. officials try to win back its favor, than it did inside, where it was only one vote among many.

Japan, Germany and Canada, the main democratic countries still belonging to UNESCO, claim that the outsider’s role has blinded the United States to many of the real reforms they say have taken place inside the U.N. organization. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, they contend, the Americans may need to rejoin UNESCO in order to save it.

“We are trying to hold the place together until the Americans come back,” said Canadian Ambassador Bernard-Meunier, “but it is kind of like asking a broken horse to dance.”