Clinton Says U.N. Bloated, Needs Reform

President Clinton on Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations with a declaration that the organization has become “bloated,” wasteful and often ineffective.

“The U.N. must be reformed,” Clinton told several hundred delegates during commemorative ceremonies in San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, where the U.N. Charter was signed 50 years ago as World War II was drawing to a close.

But the President rejected what he called the “siren song of the new isolationists” and said the Administration will continue to support the world body’s good works even as it demands improvements in their execution.

Clinton’s 25-minute address came at the conclusion of a glittering ceremony that included a choral interlude, a specially commissioned poem by Maya Angelou and speeches by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Television newsman David Brinkley served as master of ceremonies.

The audience included representatives of all 185 U.N. member states and a number of delegates to the original conference that drew up the U.N. Charter five decades ago. Among them was Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), who at the time was a young Coast Guard officer serving as an aide to the American delegation.

The commemoration was a poignant attempt to recapture some of the idealism that marked the founding of the world body in the aftermath of history’s bloodiest war.

Tutu called on the nations of the world to rededicate themselves to creating a “more gentle, more caring, more compassionate society” and to save the world’s children from “the games adults play.”

Boutros-Ghali recalled that the United Nations was born of the “age-old dream of universal cooperation” and urged the delegates “to renew that dream.”

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Clinton praised a number of U.N. successes, from child immunization programs to refugee relief efforts to peacekeeping operations in Cambodia, El Salvador and Namibia. But he said “major structural changes” are needed to eliminate overlapping agencies and costly bureaucracy.

“As its board of directors, all of us, the member states, must create a U.N. that is more flexible, that operates more rapidly, that wastes less and produces more and, most importantly, that inspires confidence among our governments and our people,” the President said.

A reminder of the United Nations’ inability to restrain the murderous impulses of its members was just outside the Opera House, where about 100 demonstrators held up a banner reading “Save Bosnia” and chanted “Bill Clinton is an immoral scum,” in reference to his unwillingness to commit U.S. forces to end the slaughter in the Balkans.

Inside the hall, Clinton responded to Republican critics of the United Nations in Congress by acknowledging that the world body spends too much money on endless talk and produces too few results. Clinton called on the organization to disband some of its dozens of subordinate agencies and “peel off what doesn’t work and get behind what will.”

At the same time, Clinton vowed to resist “the new isolationists” in Congress and promised that the United States will pay “our fair share” of U.N. costs.

The United States now provides more than 31% of the U.N. budget; by an act of Congress, that number will fall to 25% next year, and many in Congress want to cut the U.S. contribution more drastically. By the end of this year, the United States will owe the United Nations $1.3 billion in overdue payments for peacekeeping and daily operations, debts that many Republicans in Congress are unwilling to pay until the organization makes some sweeping reforms.

But Clinton insisted that “turning our backs on the United Nations is no solution. It would be shortsighted and self-destructive. It would strengthen the forces of global disintegration. It would threaten the security, the interests and the values of the American people.”

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Clinton said that although the superpower confrontation of the Cold War has ended, threats to world order have proliferated. He cited terrorism, the spread of chemical and biological weapons and environmental degradation.

“Today, the threat to our security is not in an enemy silo but in the briefcase or the car bomb of a terrorist,” Clinton said. “Our enemies are also international criminals and drug traffickers who threaten the stability of new democracies and the future of our children.”