ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 3, 1996 TAG: 9612030071
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
THE UNITED Nations remains in a stalemate, unfortunately, over the selection of a secretary general. What's worse, the stalemate pits an increasingly isolated America against the rest of the world.
After a long, public campaign to dump U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the most powerful nation on the planet found itself unable to persuade a single other member of the U.N. Security Council to join its vote last month against a second term for the Egyptian. Even Great Britain refused to go along.
With its Security Council veto, the United States can block Boutros-Ghali, whose term ends at the end of this year. But it cannot force other nations to adopt a successor. Angered at America's high-handedness and generally predisposed to thumb noses at the lone superpower, other countries are likely to oppose any U.S.-favored candidate. So the stalemate continues.
It didn't have to happen this way.
Cynics will discern another example of a Clintonian political ploy to steal conservatives' thunder. Republicans this year made a campaign issue of Boutros-Ghali, even mocking his name, and have refused in Congress to cough up more than $1.2 billion in back U.S. dues owed the world body. By bullying the U.N., Clinton undercut allegations that he's a foreign-relations wimp.
Cynics might also suggest that Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been campaigning for secretary of state, an appointment requiring Senate confirmation.
The cynics likely are right. Whatever the case, political games have consequences beyond election-time. A major consequence now is that the Clinton administration is playing into the hands of yahoo isolationists at home while undermining an already struggling United Nations abroad.
Granted, the world body hasn't performed well in all its recent police actions. But Boutros-Ghali himself was among those warning it wasn't prepared to take on the peacekeeping tasks member countries were imposing on it. U.S. support and leadership are needed to develop multilateral preparedness; instead, Clinton is increasing the likelihood that the only options available in future crises will be unilateral action or disengagement.
Granted, the bloated and inept U.N. bureaucracy needs reform; the changes Boutros-Ghali has implemented, including staff cuts and performance standards, haven't gone far enough. But the financial crisis in a $1.3 billion United Nations has been caused less by excessive expenditures than by insufficient revenues. And U.S. intimidation, in isolation even from our allies, will hardly reform the bureaucracy. It only increases resentment against an America that won't pay its dues yet expects to dictate what the U.N. must do.
Clinton is right that the organization would be better off with a new secretary general. But whether or not Boutros-Ghali deserves another term, he surely deserves more respect than he's gotten from the president. Clinton has had plenty of time to meet with Indonesian campaign contributors in the Oval Office, yet not once has he held a private meeting with the U.N. secretary general.
The manner in which the administration has gone about its anti-Boutros-Ghali campaign has been as unnecessary as it is counterproductive. Clinton could have compromised on, say, two more years of a five-year term. A negotiated settlement will happen sooner or later anyway.
Meantime, Clinton will have undercut the pitch he made before the U.N. and needs to make to Americans: that the world body is "more important than ever before, because our world is more interdependent than ever before."
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB