Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404030052
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS LENGTH: Medium
The troubles surfaced at the end of February when the press attache for U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright rebuked the secretary-general for writing a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin suggesting "some kind of United Nations presence" in the occupied territories.
"We do not think the secretary-general's suggestion is particularly helpful or useful," said James Rubin, the attache, in a rare public reprimand.
This testiness was a manifestation of an even more profound conflict in private.
Relations have fallen to such depths, reports an ambassador on the Security Council, that a diplomat from the American mission to the United Nations vowed recently that "we will destroy" the secretary-general if he dares to stand in the way of any North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"What are they talking about?" said the ambassador. "Is this Nikita Khrushchev trying to destroy Dag Hammarskjold? The Secretary General cannot be anyone's puppet. He must represent the United Nations. And, in the case of the bombing, his approach was the correct one . . . All this fighting is no good for the U.N. We cannot have the U.N. and the United States opposed to each other."
A good deal of hyperbole infused the supposed threat of the American diplomat: There is, for example, no mechanism for members of the United Nations to remove a secretary-general from office. A U.S. official, in fact, denies that members of the American mission to the United Nations use that kind of language about the secretary-general.
But there is no doubt that U.S. diplomats have berated Boutros-Ghali in private for issuing statements that smacked of a reluctance to order air strikes.
Although Boutros-Ghali makes a show of brushing off criticism, he knows he has much to lose from a sour relationship with the most powerful member of the United Nations.
"I need the United States," he said in a speech in late October. "The United Nations needs the United States. Finding the right relationship between the U.N. and the U.S. may be one of the most important tasks of our time."
The problem is only partly personal. The secretary-general can be stubborn and arrogant and contemptuous. But he can also be charming and courtly in private, and both sides insist that - despite some angry exchanges over Somalia last fall - he and Albright now deal with each other with warmth and good-natured banter.
At issue, U.N. and American aides said, are two distinct concepts of the job of secretary-general. Boutros-Ghali, 71, a former professor and deputy foreign minister in Egypt, conceives of an active role for himself, one of an international political leader offering a host of peace initiatives, his power moored in the moral force of an organization representing 184 governments.
His aides said his authority was established in Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which states, in its entirety, that "the Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."
U.S. officials believe that Boutros-Ghali is reading too much into this sentence. In the prevailing view among U.S. officials, he is an international civil servant charged with carrying out policy, not making it. Albright has said that Boutros-Ghali should regard himself as "a chief administrative officer" serving the Security Council as if it were his board of directors.
"The secretary-general often oversteps his role," said a U.S. official, "and some of the things he does are counterproductive."
Some of the sharpest rhetoric leveled at Boutros-Ghali has come from two Reagan administration officials who share the view that he is trying to usurp power: former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who derides Boutros-Ghali as a would-be "commander-in-chief of the world"; and former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who claims that the secretary-general acts as though he were "chief executive officer of the world."
Clinton administration officials believe Boutros-Ghali sets himself up for such attacks by stretching the limits of his office beyond political bounds.
But Edward Luck, president of the U.N. Association of the United States, a citizen group that supports the United Nations, said the real problem lies in the conflict between the activism of the secretary-general and the minimalist approach of President Clinton to foreign affairs.
"The United Nations has become a symbol of activist internationalism at a time when the United States would like the world to go away," Luck said in a recent interview. "The secretary-general is trying to expand his role at a time when the United States would like him to be quiet. He has become the nagging voice in the middle of the night . . ."
by CNB