U.S. Weighs Vetoing U.N. Chief’s 2nd Term

The prickly relationship between Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and U.S. officials has worsened in the last three months, raising the issue of whether the United States intends to veto any bid by him for a second term.

U.S. officials insist that no decision has been reached and predict that the White House will make up its mind within a few weeks.

But a recent procession of public rebukes of Boutros-Ghali makes clear that at least some members of the U.S. foreign policy team would like to see him replaced.

It is understood that the Clinton administration sought last year to interest Czech President Vaclav Havel in the job--an obvious sign of dissatisfaction with Boutros-Ghali.

But Havel, a distinguished playwright and essayist, turned aside the suggestion and told a news conference at the U.N.’s 50th anniversary celebration in New York last October that he did not believe that his skills fit the position.

The stubbornly independent and outspoken Boutros-Ghali will see the end of his five-year term at the close of this year. The Security Council usually settles on its choice for secretary-general in early fall, but it could delay a decision until after the November presidential elections in the United States.

Boutros-Ghali, a diplomat and professor of international law in Egypt for many years, will be 74 in November.

He has not announced his candidacy for a second term but, in the view of many diplomats and U.N. officials, appears ready to make a bid unless the Clinton administration informs him that it is prepared to use the veto against him.

The secretary-general is highly respected at the United Nations headquarters in New York for his intellect but is viewed as a cold and distant figure. Many diplomats feel that he treats them with condescension, and U.N. civil servants believe that he confuses and even paralyzes the bureaucracy by refusing to delegate authority.

Yet some diplomats and officials doubt that the United States will oppose Boutros-Ghali, no matter how much it belittles his record, because there has been no sign since the Havel news conference that the United States is pushing any other candidacy.

Despite Boutros-Ghali’s lack of popularity, the recent U.S. attacks on him have struck some diplomats as heavy-handed.

“The secretary-general annoys a lot of people,” a European ambassador said. “But who are they [the Americans] to criticize him?”

The first of the recent rebukes came in December, when the secretary-general issued a report to the Security Council on policing the return of Serb-held Eastern Slavonia to Croatia.

Boutros-Ghali wanted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was enforcing the Bosnia-Herzegovina peace accords, to take on Eastern Slavonia. But the White House was already having trouble persuading Congress to accept a NATO mission with U.S. troops in Bosnia and did not want to complicate the issue by extending the mission to Croatia.

The incident provoked Madeleine Albright, the American Ambassador to the U.N., and Boutros-Ghali to trade harsh comments.

The second recent rebuke came after a Boutros-Ghali speech in London on Jan. 10 in which he used strong language to echo a prevailing view among diplomats and bureaucrats in New York that the United States, while demanding reform, is harming the United Nations by failing to pay all its dues. At the end of 1995, the United States owed $1.2 billion.

“There is a certain dishonesty here,” Boutros-Ghali said.

“The secretary-general should concentrate on reform rather than casting blame on particular member states,” said Albright’s spokesman, James P. Rubin, at the time.

A third rebuke came a few days later after a British Broadcasting Corp. interview.

Asked if he had thought of a solution to the financial crisis of the U.N., Boutros-Ghali proposed “a light international tax,” perhaps a tax on every airline ticket sold.

A U.N. tax of this kind, in fact, had been suggested as well by Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, a Ford Foundation special commission and several other think tanks.

But the Boutros-Ghali plea was slapped down quickly by the State Department and in Congress, where Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) introduced a bill prohibiting the United Nations from collecting taxes directly from U.S. citizens.