Debt to U.N. Undercuts the U.S.

At the close of 1997 the United States owed the United Nations $1.3 billion in back dues and unpaid assessments for peacekeeping missions. By the end of this year that debt will grow by $400 million. That the world’s richest nation is unwilling--though certainly not unable--to meet its obligations is a national embarrassment and an international political liability that undercuts American influence. U.S. officials who recently sought to rally support among skeptical U.N. members for a firm stand against Iraq were reminded that the scorn for the United Nations implied by the unpaid debt has seriously hurt U.S. credibility.

It appeared for a time last year that the debt problem might be on its way to resolution. Arduous efforts by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, working with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, helped shape a deal to pay about $800 million toward clearing the arrears. There were conditions attached, the most substantive having to do with shrinking the U.N.’s bulging bureaucracy and lowering the American dues rate from 25% of the U.N. budget to 22% and eventually to 20%, a change many U.N. members not surprisingly oppose. Still, the legislation passed by the Senate represented hope for real movement.

That movement came to a dead stop in the House, where conservatives attached to the legislation a killing rider to deny U.N. funding to any group that advocates abortion, including distributing so-called morning-after pills to women raped in U.N. refugee camps. President Clinton made clear he would not sign such a bill. Anti-abortion forces in the House are promising to repeat their efforts this year. That bodes ill indeed for Clinton’s readiness to send Congress a supplementary spending bill that would include about $1 billion for back payments to the United Nations.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been meeting with officials in Washington, in part to lobby for settling the U.S. debt. Annan calls attention to the reforms made in the 15 months since he took office. He says he has delivered and now the United States should. We agree. The difficulty lies with winning assent from those provincials in the House who insist on holding American foreign policy hostage to their particular views on abortion and contraception. By asserting those views in the context of the U.S. debt to the United Nations, they are helping to erode their country’s influence in the global arena, and we all lose.