Albright Defends U.N. Before Senators

In a spirited defense of the United Nations, Ambassador Madeleine Albright warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that anti-U.N. carping in Congress undercuts her position in New York and weakens U.S. leadership at the world organization.

“In New York now,” she said, “I am subjected to a variety of questions from friendly allies and Third World countries who are saying: ‘Why are you telling us what to do . . . when we read in your newspapers that your Congress is not interested in the United Nations?’ So it undercuts my role.”

Testifying before the committee chaired by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who has been a foe of the United Nations, Albright spoke in opposition to Republican bills that she said would cripple the world organization because of provisions that would have the effect of drastically reducing American financing of U.N. peacekeeping missions.

To demonstrate the importance of the United Nations, Albright said Iraq had been kept in check only because of U.N. sanctions and inspections.

If sanctions were lifted, she said, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein probably would expel all inspectors and then be able to explode a nuclear device in five to seven years, resume his chemical warfare program in two to three years and his biological warfare program in less than a year, and start producing Scud missiles again within a year.

As evidence that the Iraqis are preparing to go back into the production of weapons of mass destruction, Albright showed the committee aerial intelligence photos.

One set of photos compared the Al Kindi missile research and development facility after it was heavily damaged during the Persian Gulf War with its appearance last month. She said the photos showed that Al Kindi, which she said supported many Iraqi weapons programs before the war, “has since been rebuilt and expanded.”

Albright testified that polls and her own travels have made it clear that most Americans have a high regard for the United Nations and its peacekeeping efforts. “I think, if I can respectfully say this, that certain members of Congress are out of sync with the American public on this.” Members of Congress, in short, were mistaken if they believed “politically it’s astute to bash the U.N.,” she said.

In her dissection of the bills--one already passed by the House, the second sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.)--Albright was most concerned about a provision that would deduct from U.S. assessments for peacekeeping the amount of money the Pentagon spends on voluntary missions in support of the United Nations.

She said this provision means that the United States would deduct costs of operations such as enforcement of sanctions against Iraq, patrolling “no-fly” zones in Iraq and Bosnia-Herzegovina, taking part in the multinational force in Haiti and supplying the Bosnian airlift.

She said that if other countries followed the American lead and reduced their peacekeeping assessments by sums they spend voluntarily on programs, “it would destroy the ability of the organization to do business.”

On another U.N. matter, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Me.) questioned the wisdom of supplying intelligence information to the United Nations in view of the recent discovery of boxes of classified U.S. documents in the abandoned compound of the U.N. commander in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Albright said she was outraged by the incident, now under investigation by the Pentagon. But she said that supplying the intelligence information to the United Nations had made the world body more effective.