U.S. Proposes $900 Million UN Spending Cap to Get Budget Accord 

Bill Varner
December 22, 2005
Bloomberg
Original Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aAHwNFYWLmg0&refer=top_world_news

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and leading contributors to the United Nations proposed a $900 million spending limit for the organization in 2006 while talks continue on ways to overhaul its management, as diplomats worked to adopt a budget before Christmas. 
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has said the UN shouldn't adopt the traditional two-year budget until envoys agree to management changes and such proposals as creation of a pro-democracy Human Right Council. Secretary-General Kofi Annan rejected his suggestion of a three-month interim budget, saying it would create a $320 million shortfall in the first quarter of 2006. 
Negotiations on the Human Rights Council, to replace the Geneva-based commission the U.S. has criticized for granting membership to rights abusers such as Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, adjourned yesterday until Jan. 11. Talks on improvements in management and oversight are deadlocked. 
The U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which together contribute 46 percent of the UN budget, offered a compromise that would limit spending to a figure anticipated for the first six months of the year. A proposed $3.9 billion budget for 2006 and 2007 would be adopted with the proviso that it will be adjusted to reflect management changes and restructuring. 
``It has the same effect as an interim budget,'' Bolton told reporters. ``The linkage between policy and budgets would be unmistakable.'' Asked what would happen if diplomats can't agree on proposed changes in the UN, Bolton said the world body would ``run out of money.'' 
The UN's operating budget is separate from the $5.5 billion spent on 16 peacekeeping missions in countries such as Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN agencies such as the World Food Program and World Health Organization have separate budgets that rely on voluntary contributions. 
Cash Flow 
Christopher Burnham, a former investment banker and U.S. State Department official appointed in May to the UN's top management post, said the compromise proposal ``would certainly meet the cash flow needs of the UN while the General Assembly continues its consideration of governance reforms and other issues that would be quite important.'' 
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya and Russian Ambassador Andrey Denisov said they were studying the suggestion. 
``I hope this budget issue would not undermine the work of the organization,'' Wang said. 
Annan said at a new conference yesterday that the UN could end the year with only $35 million in cash and that diplomats had agreed on only four of 250 paragraphs in the budget resolution. 
``We have seen budget struggles over the past, but this time it is different,'' Annan said. ``It is different in the sense that we are looking at major reforms for the organization and we also have our ongoing activities, which must continue as the new year begins.'' 
Without specifically naming the U.S., Annan said the atmosphere of the budget negotiations was ``a bit tense,'' that ``tempers are high, and there is quite a bit of mistrust,'' and that diplomats ``are operating in an atmosphere of threats and intimidation, which some of them say they resent.''