Annan Plan to Overhaul U.N. Meets Resistance 
By Warren Hoge
April 24, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/world/africa/24nations.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 23 — A powerful group of developing nations is challenging Secretary General Kofi Annan's prescription for reforming the management of the United Nations, and action on the group's resolution on Monday could put off consideration of the changes for months. 
Mr. Annan's proposal, modernizing an organization created 60 years ago and bringing its recruitment, contracting and training practices in line with its vast new responsibilities, is a main objective of his as he completes his last year in office. It also comes after widespread criticism of the way the United Nations has been run, as exemplified by the scandal over the Iraq oil-for-food program.
Delay at this point could provoke a larger confrontation in June, when the institution must settle its annual budget. Under an arrangement pressed by the United States, member states agreed in December to tie the budgeting for the second half of this year to achieving broad management changes.
The current conflict has arisen in the General Assembly's powerful Fifth Committee, the panel that controls budgeting decisions. Committee members received Mr. Annan's plan in March with the expectation that they would review it but not propose major alterations before sending it along to the overall assembly. 
Instead, the committee took up a resolution last week asking Mr. Annan to submit a welter of new reports detailing his proposals to the General Assembly in September. The resolution was offered by South Africa in the name of the Group of 77, which represents 132 developing nations.
The committee adjourned at 4 a.m. Friday, with prospects uncertain about whether it would reach a consensus and avoid a vote, or whether it would institute a delay in Mr. Annan's changes. 
John R. Bolton, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States and other countries that provided the bulk of the organization's financing were opposed to the resolution, but he conceded that it would pass if put to a vote.
Mr. Bolton was speaking to the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia on Friday, but his spokesman, Richard A. Grenell, said, Ambassador Bolton would be saddened if it passed because it would be a defeat for the secretary general's management recommendations.
Of particular concern to the developing nations are sections of Mr. Annan's report that give the secretary general new responsibilities in the budgeting and personnel deployment, which the General Assembly believes are exclusively its preserve.
The South African move reflects deepening suspicions among developing nations that the management reforms represent a ceding of power by the 191-member General Assembly, where they have a voice, to the 15-member Security Council and the Secretariat, where authority resides in the great powers and the major donor nations.
The fear of the G77 is that the agenda of the most powerful will dictate decisions, probably for political reasons, said Enrique Berruga, the ambassador from Mexico. We have a deficit of confidence at the United Nations right now.
Heraldo Muñoz, the ambassador from Chile, which is part of the Group of 77, said: The majority of the Group of 77 have no basic objections to giving greater authority to the secretary general, it only makes sense. But on the other hand, they feel it would put him in a position where he could be pressured by the big donors — 'I want such and such a decision to be taken because I was the one that put up the money.' 
In his proposal, Mr. Annan anticipated this dispute, warning that it was one that was undermining what should be a common commitment to an effective United Nations.