The New York Times

Wednesday, October 27, 1999

Holbrooke Accuses House of Hurting U.S. Role in the World

By BARBARA CROSSETTE

UNITED NATIONS -- Richard C. Holbrooke, the United States representative at the United Nations, went on the offensive against the Republican-led House of Representatives Tuesday, charging that persistent Congressional tampering with budget bills covering foreign operations and payments to the United Nations was damaging American national security interests.

The morning after President Clinton vetoed the second of two foreign spending bills because of riders he could not accept, Holbrooke said that House Republicans had effectively rigged the legislation with a provision that would have guaranteed the loss of the American seat in the General Assembly by delaying allocations past a Dec. 31 payment deadline set under rules established in the United Nations Charter.

"The problem is not with the Senate; it's with the House," he told a breakfast meeting of the Association for a Better New York. As it is, the United States could lose its Assembly seat even if Congress passed an acceptable bill because of conditions it attached to payments.

Administration officials say they have only a few critical weeks to renew negotiations to try to find agreement on foreign spending. "I believe this is fixable in the dramatic endgame of the budget process, which has now begun," Holbrooke later told reporters here.

"The overwhelming majority of the people of both parties in both houses of Congress want a strong national security," he said. "We need to band together now on a bipartisan basis to push back the forces of that small group of people who want to destroy United States national security interests and simultaneously do immeasurable damage to the United Nations."

Republicans do not disagree that time is running out on legislation to pay United Nations dues, or at least that part of the total that Congress recognizes as American debt.

But Republicans say that Democrats are to blame for not sticking to a pact negotiated between Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware and the ranking minority leader. The pact accepted certain conditions -- including a demand for a no-growth United Nations budget and a seat on the organization's budgetary committee for the United States -- in return for $926 million. The United Nations calculates the American debt closer to $1.7 billion.

Republicans say that last-minute Democratic efforts in the House to strip budget bills of conditions such as bars against aid to organizations that promote abortion abroad generated hostility.

"It's up to the Administration to work something out with the House," said March Thiessen, spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "But they have to be flexible and they have to be creative."

Last week, President Clinton vetoed the Foreign Operations bill, which fell far short of money he had requested for a range of programs, including support for the Wye River accord on the Middle East. On Monday, he vetoed the Commerce, Justice and State bill, which includes United Nations payments. Allocations for other, domestic programs were also considered unacceptable by the White House.

Holbrooke drew links this morning between the budget impasse and crucial United Nations projects supported by the United States now in jeopardy for lack of funds.

The extensive United Nations civilian mission in Kosovo, pushed in the Security Council by Washington, is running out of money and will soon not be able to pay for local police officers and civil servants, Holbrooke said. He and other diplomats consider the establishment of functioning civilian institutions in Kosovo critical to the reputation of the United Nations in rebuilding life in shattered territories -- East Timor is next -- as well as to the long-term success of the NATO military operation in Kosovo.

Holbrooke said he had received a phone call over the weekend from Bernard Kouchner, the United Nations civil administrator in Kosovo, raising an alarm and pleading for help. Four months after the establishment of the Kosovo mission, the United States has contributed only $4 million to a voluntary start-up trust fund of $27 million. Washington has yet to pay any of the $39 million it has been assessed for regular contributions to the mission, and a larger bill looms next year.