UNESCO board invites United States to continue participation in agency.

The Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), concluding a special session on the consequences of the United States withdrawal, invited that Government on 17 February to resume active participation in the organization as soon as possible. It decided to grasp the "outstretched hand" of the United States, which will maintain an observer mission at UNESCO, and requested the Director-General to provide the mission with facilities.

The Board did not accept a proposal that any staff reductions to meet the new situation should be applied to staff members who were nationals of the State that had ceased to be a member of UNESCO. Instead, it called on the Director-General to make appropriate adjustments--both financial and structural--to bring down the organization's expenditure, in particular by reducing expenditure on staff.

It call on all member States to pay any arrears in their contributions, to forego the surplus due to them from a reserve set up earlier to provide for a fall in the value of the United States dollar, and to make voluntary contributions. It invited the Director-General to set up a special account for voluntary contributions, and congratulated him on economy measures already taken which had brought savings of $15 million.

In response to the request of the Board, a number of States offered to forego surpluses totalling more than $6 million, due to them from UNESCO's monetary fluctuation reserve, as a special contribution to the organization.

Director-General Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow told the Board there was a $28 million shortfall even after his economy measures. He called on it to give him directives if it considered that the current programmes which member States had adopted should be changed.

At the start of the session at UNESCO'S Paris headquarters, France announced a special contribution of 20 million francs (about $2 million) to this year's UNESCO budget.

Director-General M'Bow said that UNESCO would maintain co-operation with American intellectual, educational, scientific and cultural circles "whose contribution has been so important in the past". He added that close relations would also be maintained with United States non-governmental organizations.