Two U.S. Senators Propose U.N. Reform Bill
By NICK WADHAMS
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 13, 2005; 10:46 PM
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations reacted warily Wednesday to a bill proposed by two U.S. Senators that gives the United States the right _ but not the requirement _ to withhold dues if the United Nations doesn't enact wide-ranging reforms.
The bill, which was introduced Tuesday, got a better reception than a House measure, which requires the dues withholding if there are no reforms.
Yet even the latest threat was enough to make the United Nations wary. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric called it a tough piece of legislation.
Any such withholding would only hamper attempt to make the organization more effective, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
U.N. officials fear the threat of withholding would plunge the United Nations back into financial crisis like the one it faced in the mid-1990s when the United States refused to pay millions of dollars in back dues. The United States is the largest U.N. contributor, paying about 22 percent of its annual US$2 billion budget.
The new bill, from Republican Senators Norm Coleman and Richard Lugar, borrows heavily from a recent report issued by a task force led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell.
They recommended such changes as setting up an independent auditing board and weighted voting on financial issues for members who contribute more to the budget.
Like that report, the bill from Coleman and Lugar also demands the United Nations appoint a single senior official to serve as its de facto chief operating officer to oversee its daily operations.
Coleman, from Minnesota, is one of the United Nations' leading critics among many in Congress and has repeatedly demanded that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan resign.
While the House version obligated the United States to withhold dues if a lengthy set of reforms weren't carried out, the Senate version includes a single sentence allowing the president to withhold 50 percent of dues if progress hasn't been made toward reform.
His chief of staff, Erich Mische, defended the decision not to mandate the withholding of dues, saying President Bush would defy Congress at his own risk if the need to withhold became apparent.
Fundamentally this is an aggressive ambitious piece of legislation that gets us all to the same place but taking a different path to get there, Mische said.
Lugar, of Indiana, defended that measure, saying it protected the president's prerogative.
Without narrowing the president's options, this legislation gives him the leverage he needs, Lugar said when he introduced the bill Tuesday.
Bush had opposed the House bill requirement and the idea of withholding dues, making its chances unclear from the start.
The next step will be a conference between House and Senate leaders to come up with compromise legislation.