The New York Times

Wednesday, June 23, 1999

Senate Backs U.N. Payment, but More Hurdles Remain

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON -- The Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Tuesday authorizing the payment of more than $800 million in back dues to the United Nations but cutting future American contributions to the organization.

The Clinton administration has agreed to support the bill, after deciding in the spring to drop its opposition to a provision that requires the United States to reduce its share of the regular U.N. budget from 25 percent to 20 percent. The administration reversed its position as part of a deal to try to win confirmation for Richard Holbrooke to the chief American diplomat's post at the United Nations.

The Senate vote to approve the overall bill, 98-1, does not mean that the United Nations is about to receive a big check from Washington. Far from it. The legislation, a $6.4 billion two-year State Department spending bill, now moves to the House, where conservative Republicans saddled a similar bill last year with antiabortion language. That led to a veto by President Clinton.

Republicans are expected to try to resurrect an antiabortion provision that would bar American aid from being provided to groups that lobby abroad for abortion rights, raising the threat of another veto.

The bill approved by the Senate Tuesday would provide the United Nations with $819 million in back dues over three years and forgive $107 million that the organization owes the United States.

The bill requires that in exchange for providing the money, the United States would cut its overall contribution to the regular U.N. budget to 20 percent, and the American share of the budget for peacekeeping operations from 31 percent to 25 percent.

The reductions would be imposed unilaterally on the United Nations, which is expected to balk at the provisions. The United Nations has in the past opposed efforts by the United States to trim its share of the organization's budget.

After originally balking at the proposed cuts in the American contribution to the U.N. budget and other conditions imposed on the repayment of the back dues, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright agreed to support the legislation if only to secure Holbrooke's confirmation as the U.S. representative at the United Nations.

Congressional officials said the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, had threatened to block the nomination until he received Albright's commitment to support the bill, which he sponsored along with Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the committee's ranking Democrat.

The United States and the United Nations continue to argue over exactly how much money is owed to the organization. According to the United Nations, the United States owes about $1.6 billion; the United States says the figure is closer to $1 billion.

If the legislation is adopted, the United States would open negotiations with a special committee at the United Nations that determines how much each of the member nations is billed for dues each year. "We'd go to them with the message that Congress won't pay any more than 20 percent of the budget, and the committee will have to find a way to deal with that," said a State Department official.

The only lawmaker to vote against the bill, Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., said that it was wrong for the United States to impose conditions on the repayment of its back dues. "It's simply unacceptable that the richest nation on earth is also the biggest debtor to the United Nations," he said.

But Biden said that the bill offers the only hope for repayment of the back dues owed by the United States. "In an ideal world I'd like to pay our arrears to the United Nations in full with no conditions," he said. But he added, "Our choices are this or nothing."

On Tuesday, Holbrooke, who now seems assured of confirmation as chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations, reaffirmed his support of the provisions in the Senate bill and pledged to the Senate "that I will make it my highest sustained priority to make it work."

In the second of three days of confirmation hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee, Holbrooke, a veteran diplomat and the former American ambassador to Germany, said Tuesday that "budgetary discipline will be my watchword."

The bill passed by the Senate also calls for $3 billion to be spent over the next five years to step up security at American embassies around the world, an amount requested by the Clinton administration in the aftermath of the bombing last year of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.