Nuclear Inspectors Have a Mandate but Need Money : United Nations: If the International Atomic Energy Agency falters for lack of funds, the U.S. must be blamed.

One might expect that the United States, which led a $50-billion Gulf War and then assigned the job of nuclear weapons searches in Iraq to the United Nations, would supply its share of funds to do the job. But, while inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are still in Iraq, the IAEA director general, Hans Blix, reports that his agency and the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq are already $60 million in the hole.

Similarly, in nuclear safety, the United States counts on the Vienna-based IAEA for reactor safety assistance for states worldwide, with a particular concern about Chernobyl-style accidents. But the IAEA today lacks the few million added dollars needed to respond to the many technical safety assistance requests from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

The IAEA, the offspring of President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” proposal in 1956, is a bargain for America. We pay only 25% of its $200-million budget, provide many of its personnel and have a major say in its operations.

Yet, despite our sizable influence in the IAEA, and despite the grave responsibilities we have assigned the organization, we have helped force it onto a “zero real growth” budget for eight years. We routinely make our annual payment nearly a year late in the U.N. budget cycle. And, except now in Iraq, we decline to provide the IAEA with satellite intelligence and other information on possible nuclear proliferation violations, though such evidence could trigger “special inspections” in places like Iran or Libya--inspections the United States could not conduct itself.

The problem is bureaucratic politics. Even the most respected U.N. agencies lack highly placed champions in the federal budget struggles. Top State Department managers typically have little sympathy for programs that aren’t operated by the department’s own employees. The Energy and Defense departments, with a closer stake in the IAEA, have even less desire to pay regular U.N. expenses. The National Security Council is supposed to take on the job of orchestrating policy in such cases. But it has taken no initiative to intervene and is under no directive to do so.

Congress should solve the problem, but it has not. Most of its constituents know of the “U.N. inspectors” in Iraq, but probably have never heard, by name, of the IAEA.

However, if the U.N. inspectors have to leave Iraq for lack of funds, or if specific mischief is uncovered--too late--in another aspiring nuclear state, or an uninspected Bulgarian power reactor blows apart, the blame for neglecting the IAEA is not going to fall on Congress, or on the artful dodgers of the federal departments, or even on the passive National Security Council. It is going to fall on the President of the United States. One hopes that someone has briefed him.