United Nations Peace Rich, Cash Poor

By John Greenwald

As representatives of Iran and Iraq sat at the ends of a horseshoe-shaped table at the United Nations Security Council last week, they looked almost like schoolboys about to be disciplined. They stared straight ahead as Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced that after eight years of war and a million or more casualties, Iran and Iraq had agreed to end all hostilities on Aug. 20. The two sides, he added, would begin peace talks in Geneva five days later.

Although the session lasted only 15 minutes, it underscored the new power and respect that the U.N. has recently won as a peacekeeper. But even as the U.N. was helping to halt conflicts in trouble spots from Afghanistan to southern Africa, a dispute with the U.S. over $467 million in back dues and $70 million in peacekeeping assessments threatened the success of those efforts. Said Perez de Cuellar of plans to send 350 troops to observe the Iran-Iraq cease-fire: "I simply don't have the money to pay for it." Unless the U.S. soon makes up its arrears, the Secretary-General warned, the U.N. will have to cut back operations sharply when it runs out of cash reserves in November.

The dispute placed Washington in the awkward and embarrassing position of appearing to want peace while being unwilling to support it. Normally outspoken U.N. critics such as Claiborne Pell, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, denounced the U.S. as a "deadbeat."

But not even the U.N.'s most loyal advocates give it sole credit for the recent outbreak of peace in many parts of the world. Perez de Cuellar cited improved ties between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for creating a "much more propitious atmosphere for dialogue and understanding." At the same time, Iran's battlefield losses in its war with Iraq drove Tehran to accept a one- year-old U.N. resolution for halting the conflict. In southern Africa, U.S. diplomacy led to a cease-fire in Angola that utilized a ten-year-old U.N. resolution to help achieve peace.

Relations between Washington and the U.N. soured in the 1970s when the developing countries, usually in league with the Soviet bloc, seemed bent on transforming the General Assembly into a forum for attacking the U.S. and other industrial nations. One low point came in 1975 when a U.N. resolution equated Zionism with racism. Angered by a decade of such hectoring, Congress voted in 1985 to withhold a portion of its annual dues until the U.N. reformed its budget and gave large countries greater control of its spending.

The Reagan Administration argues that the U.S. still pays far more to support the U.N. than it receives credit for. Richard Williamson, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, says the U.S. contributes $1.8 billion a year to all U.N. and U.N.-affiliated operations, including dues and voluntary contributions. Even when assistance to regional development banks is excluded, Williamson says, the U.S. pays more than $900 million a year, and "that contribution dwarfs anybody else's." U.S. officials are particularly angered by criticism of the U.S. at a time when Moscow remains some $250 million in arrears for special peacekeeping operations. The Soviets, however, have deflected criticism by paying their dues for this year.

The White House also complains that the U.N. is a spendthrift and wastes too much on its missions. Administration officials, for example, scoff at U.N. plans to spend $74 million to monitor the Iran-Iraq truce for six months. Yet the Administration appealed last week to such states as Saudi Arabia and Japan, which should benefit from unimpeded gulf oil shipments, to contribute $20 million for U.N. troops in the area.

For its part, Congress has been favorably impressed by the U.N.'s diplomatic success and by the progress it has made in cutting costs and overhauling its budget. The U.N. has reduced its worldwide staff by nearly 13%, bringing the number of workers to 13,500. President Reagan could now release an initial $44 million in funds by declaring that the U.N. had satisfied Congress's 1985 conditions. But in a meeting last month with Perez de Cuellar, Reagan said he wanted to see more evidence of U.N. compliance.

That has dismayed White House allies like Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas, who sponsored the 1985 legislation. In a letter to Reagan last week, Kassebaum joined fellow Senators Pell and Indiana Republican Richard Lugar in urging Reagan to release U.N. funds "at the earliest possible date." But while a senior Administration official conceded that "we think we should ante up more money," he offered little hope for quick action. Nonetheless, Reagan may want to declare a truce in his financial battle with the U.N. by Sept. 26, when he is scheduled to address the General Assembly.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: ANTONIO SUAREZ

CAPTION: TOP FIVE DEBTORS

DESCRIPTION: Countries ranked according to total United Nations dues outstanding; color photograph: United Nations buildings and New York City skyline.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: ANTONIO SUAREZ

CAPTION: AMERICA AND THE U.N.

DESCRIPTION: Cumulative United States debt to United Nations, 1980-1988; color photograph: see above.

With reporting by Marguerite Michaels/New York and Bruce van Voorst/Washington