U.N. Chief Offers Plan to Overhaul World Body

Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched the broadest reforms in U.N. history Wednesday with a plan to eliminate 1,000 jobs, cut administrative costs by a third, appoint a powerful new deputy and streamline what he admitted is an often dysfunctional bureaucracy.

The proposals, announced in an address to the U.N. General Assembly and in a 95-page report six months in the making, went some way toward addressing concerns about the world organization but failed to please its harshest critics.

“This is my pledge to you, and to the world: Today, we begin a quiet revolution in the United Nations,” Annan told the General Assembly, U.N.which will have to approve some of the measures at its next session, beginning in September. Annan told reporters later that he hoped most of the changes could be in place by November. Those that do not require General Assembly consent already are underway, he said.

U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson responded immediately with encouraging words.

“The secretary-general has taken a very significant step toward the kind of structural reform that will enable the United Nations of today and the future to do more for the world’s people, to do it better and to do it for less,” Richardson said. “We commend him for his initiative thus far and pledge our full support to making the process of reform at the United Nations an effective one.”

For some, however, the revolution Annan described Wednesday was far too tame.

Critics, and even some friends of the U.N., complained that he was trying to reform how the U.N. operates rather than what it does. And they were particularly concerned about the absence of a defining vision for how the organization should meet the challenges of the post-Cold War world.

But Annan said this was only the beginning of the reform process, and he invited U.N. members to propose more sweeping changes.

In fact, more radical reform proposals were rejected early in the process after objections by the U.N. bureaucracy or member states. While the plan would probably lead to efficiencies, reduce duplication and result in a gradual reduction in U.N. staffing in years to come, the 1,000 positions--10% of the work force of the U.N. secretariat--it eliminates immediately are vacant and in some cases have been unfilled for more than a year.

“Not a single U.N. activity is earmarked for extinction. . . . This is quite consciously not a proposal to shrink the U.N.,” said Jeffrey Laurenti, executive director of policy for the United Nations Assn. of the United States, which seeks to boost U.S. support for the world body.

In a further attempt to keep a lid on the costly bureaucracy, Annan pledged a no-growth budget of about $1.3 billion a year into the next century and proposed a sunset clause that would automatically set a cutoff date for any new U.N. program. In addition, he recommended that the General Assembly end its annual fall session by Nov. 30--three weeks earlier than in the past.

Though his report offered few specifics, he suggested that the U.N. needed to do more to fight human rights abuses, track the movement of arms around the world and monitor trafficking in illegal narcotics and human contraband, such as child prostitutes.

Among the proposals announced Wednesday:

* A “revolving fund” of up to $1 billion to help the U.N. through its ongoing financial crisis, largely caused by the failure of the U.S. to pay its back dues. The fund would be created by voluntary contributions from member states and could lend money, with interest, to countries too poor to pay their dues. Records show 111 of the 185 U.N. members behind in their dues.

* A deputy secretary-general to serve as Annan’s chief lieutenant. Annan declined to speculate on potential candidates.

* Reductions in administrative overhead from 38% to 25% of the budget over the next five years. Savings would be funneled into a new aid fund for the world’s poor countries, and could total more than $200 million by 2002.

* A plan to accelerate the U.N.’s ability to put peacekeeping forces in the field, in part by asking member states to keep some forces on standby for U.N. duty. Officials pointedly noted that this is not a U.N. standing army, a notion that is anathema to many in Congress.

* The review and consolidation of such activities as procurement, contracting for services and storage of archives. The U.N. office in Vienna, for example, saved $150,000 a year by changing its janitorial contract, which had called for cleaning vacant offices five times a week.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Rod Grams (R-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations, announced he would hold hearings on the reform package in August. Grams called Annan’s plan “meager” and “unacceptable” and likened the U.N. to “a country club for diplomats.”

Grams added that the Senate is prepared to withhold the amount the United States owes the U.N. in the absence of acceptable reform. (Congress calculates that the United States owes $819 million, although the U.N. believes the figure is higher.) “Bottom line, if the reforms are not met, the $819 million will not be paid,” he said.

Annan seemed to anticipate such criticism in his address to the General Assembly.

“I ask . . . that you judge us not only by the cuts we propose or by the structures we change. Judge us instead--and judge us rightly--by the relief and the refuge that we provide to the poor, to the hungry, to the sick and threatened--the peoples of the world whom the United Nations exists to serve.”