Playing International Hardball

By George Russell

An aggressive U.S. stance begins to produce results

In Nairobi's conical-roofed Kenyatta

Conference Center, the normally placid atmosphere of a technical gathering was electric with global tension last week Diplomats from 157 nations huddled in their seats or bantered uneasily across the room. They were awaiting the results of a secret ballot that could mean life or death tor one of the oldest cooperative agencies in the world, the United Nations-sponsored International Telecommunication Union (ITU), founded in 1865, and that could call into question the U.S. commitment to the U.N.

Finally, as the tally was broadcast a palpable mood of relief swept through the hall. By a vote of 85 to 31, the delegates had adopted a British-inspired resolution that condemned Israel for its June 6 invasion of Lebanon. Far more important for the ITU, the resolution thwarted an explosive proposal, sponsored by Algeria and strongly supported by Libya, Iraq and other hard-line Arab states, that demanded Israel's expulsion from the nominally apolitical organization. The chief US representative at the meeting, Lawyer Michael Gardner, pronounced himself absolutely delighted" at the outcome Gardner had warned that passage of the measure would mean U.S. withdrawal from the ITU and suspension of $2.4 million in American funding (more than 6% of the ITU'S budget last year) for the agency. Said Gardner: "Nairobi has sent a clear message to the people who would like to spoil the whole U.N. system."

In Manhattan that message was apparently heard. A similar resolution, demanding Israel's ejection from the 157-member U.N. General Assembly, was losing momentum. Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. Ali Treiki announced on Friday that a 20-member Arab bloc would cease, for the moment at least, to press for Israel's ostracism.

Among the many factors that produced the change in attitude, one stood out: a blunt warning by U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz that Washington would withdraw both its presence and its all-important funding from the General Assembly and from any U.N. affiliate that voted to expel Israel. This year the U.S. is slated to contribute $179.8 million to the U.N., or 25% of the organization's entire budget, in contrast to $79 million, or 11%, from the Soviet Union. Washington made it clear that the U.S. threat did not extend to the strategic U.N. Security Council or any other U.N. organization where there is no wrongful action against a legitimate member."

Shultz's threat was explicit but not surprising. Only last month the U.S., along with Britain and France, walked out of a meeting of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna after it voted to refuse to recognize Israel's credentials as a member. In response Shultz announced that the U.S. would suspend the payment of $8.5 million in dues to the IAEA while Washington reconsiders its participation in the organization.

The Reagan Administration's tough line is not completely new. Between 1974 and 1976 Gerald Ford suspended a total of 43.1 million in payments to the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) That body had voted in favor of a resolution that cut off UNESCO funding to Israel for altering the historical features" of Jerusalem. In 1977 the Carter Administration withdrew from the U.N.-sponsored International Labor Organization (ILO) in response to that organization's attacks on U.S. policy in the Middle East. Two years later, explaining that the ILO had decided to return to its basic principles, the U S rejoined the Geneva-based body.

The latest crisis differs radically from previous U.S. bouts of unhappiness with the U.N. As a founding member of the organization, Washington has usually tolerated, although sometimes restively the posturing of U.N. members as a necessary safety valve in the chaotic world of international politics. No longer. The most recent confrontations over Israel reveal that the Reagan Administration has adopted a new, highly aggressive attitude toward the U.N. The U.S. goal is not just to defend Israel. It is to arrest a political trend that threatens to discredit the work of the U.N. and its specialized bodies As a senior State Department official puts it "The U.N. is not a detached forum where nations can say what they want. It is an important part of diplomacy, and should be looked at seriously by the participants " If anything, the White House attitude is echoed even more emphatically by Congress. Last April, at the urging of New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on the U.S. to suspend its participation in the General Assembly if Israel were ever expelled. The greatest pressure for tough U.S. action is coming from conservative circles. In a forthcoming study, the Washington-based Heritage Foundation will take the U.N. to task for promoting a double standard on human rights, being consistently anti-American and antibusiness and aiding Marxist guerrillas. Calling upon the U.S. to downgrade its participation at the U N Columnist William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter, argued two weeks ago: this is our chance to call the

Third World bluff. Let them push us out and then invite the U.N. to locate elsewhere."

Washington's skepticism about the U.N. has been seconded by the international organization's Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. In a surprisingly pessimistic summary of the U.N's condition, Perez de Cuellar, 62, a Peruvian career diplomat who began his five-year term as Secretary-General last January declared in his first annual report to the General Assembly, in September, that we are perilously close to a new international anarchy." The Secretary-General's main concern was that nations were increasingly ignoring the U.N. and its institutions, particularly the Security Council to resolve disputes by force. Said he: "Allegations of partisanship, indecisiveness or incapacity arising from divisions among member states are sometimes invoked to justify this sidetracking."

The sad fact is that from Washington s point of view those allegations are often justified. When Israel invaded Lebanon last June, the 7,000-member U.N.

Interim Force in Lebanon offered little more than token resistance as Israeli tanks roared past U.N. checkpoints in southern Lebanon on their way to Beirut.

During last spring's Falkland Islands war, the Security Council condemned Argentina's invasion of Britain's remote South Atlantic dependencies, but Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar failed in his efforts to avert bloodshed. Nor did the General Assembly dare to condemn the Soviet Union by name when it called for an end to Moscow's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

In one of the most serious accusations to be raised at the U.N. in recent years, the U.S. charged in 1981 that the Soviet Union and its allies were using chemical weapons ("yellow rain") in Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan. Although doctors in the area have produced convincing evidence to support the claim, the U.N. has done little more than send a commission to make a desultory investigation.

The organization's current plight is summed up bleakly by Jacques Kosciusko-Morizet, who was France's Ambassador to the U.N. from 1970 to 1972 and later Ambassador to Washington. Says he:

'The U.N. is weaker and more discredited than at any other time I can recall. No one really takes the U.N. seriously." Nonetheless, Kosciusko-Morizet stubbornly defends the international organization in its latest period of trial. "There are a lot of steps the U.S. could take," he says, "between threatening pullout and letting Israel be expelled."

Other U.S. allies echo Kosciusko-Morizet's view that the organization, no matter how troubled it may be, still serves a purpose. Says a Bonn-based diplomat: "We do not underestimate the U.N.'s value as a peace-keeping force. We would not have had 30 years of peace in [Western Europe] without the U.N." British officials, who strongly agree with the Reagan Administration that U.N. agencies have become far too infected with Third World politics, particularly over the Arab-Israeli issue, feel that the U.N. remains a valuable diplomatic umbrella.

The Reagan Administration's new combative strategy toward the U.N. may prove vital to the organization. For one thing, Washington's attitude implies a commitment to stay and fight, rather than simply withdraw in disgust. As Jeane Kirkpatrick, the controversial U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., told TIME Correspondent James Wilde: "We need a new departure. We must give more importance to the U.N. and take it more seriously, both in the positive and negative aspects. The U.N. is vital to American interests." The paradox is that as the U.S. strives to prove that point, the uproar is liable to grow louder along the banks of Manhattan's East River. --By George Russell. Reported by Louis Malasz/United Nations and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington

With reporting by Louis Malasz, Gregory H. Wierzynski

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