Who's the deadbeat? U.S. efforts to reform the UN have been half-hearted - or less.

UNITED Nations reform is back in the news. Shortly after his appointment as secretary general, Kofi Annan, a career UN bureaucrat from Ghana, traveled to Washington to assure congressional leaders that he shared their concerns and was committed to reducing waste and inefficiency in the world body. President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright welcomed the new secretary general's determination to carry out reform. But why, after nearly two decades of U.S. effort, is UN reform still an issue?

The UN's resistance to change is often blamed on the UN bureaucracy itself, or on the Third World countries that dominate the General Assembly. In fact, much of the fault lies closer to home.

During the Reagan Administration, Congress began taking a closer look at UN operations and did not like what it found. As Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick repeatedly pointed out, UN operations were full of waste, fraud, and abuse. With budgetary constraints at home, few could defend excess at the UN. In 1985 Congress approved with bipartisan support the landmark Kassebaum Amendment, which required the UN to adopt major institutional, administrative, and financial reforms, or risk loss of contributions from the United States, which provides 25 per cent of the UN's annual budget.

ADOPTION of this legislation caused a furor in the UN Secretariat and among UN member states. The U.S. was condemned for financial blackmail. By the late 1980s many UN member states openly attacked the U.S. for its continued withholding. The U.S. was accused of bad faith and acting as an "international outlaw." Some of the most stinging attacks came from Western Europe and Canada. U.S. officials in Washington and New York tended to collapse in the face of such criticism. It would not be long before U.S. officials, some at the highest levels, would refer to their own country as a "deadbeat nation."

The contradiction in U.S. policy under the Bush and later the Clinton Administration -- promoting budget reductions and reform while insisting on increased spending in support of priority programs -- was readily apparent to UN bureaucrats and foreign delegates alike. Reaction ranged from sarcastic commentary in UN meetings to outright blackmail in which allocation of resources in support of U.S. priorities was made dependent on continued funding of worthless activities favored by foreign delegates or the UN bureaucracy.

Support for the vast expansion of the UN's peacekeeping role was the best example of the contradictory nature of U.S. policy. Over a period of ten years, the Security Council considered nearly twenty new peacekeeping operations and missions. Although many did not involve important strategic interests, and although in sum they would eventually increase U.S. peacekeeping contributions more than tenfold, the U.S. never exercised its veto. With a legal obligation to fund 25 per cent of costs, the U.S. was committed to spending several billion dollars over the next decade. Whenever anyone warned that existing UN administrative and financial structures were grossly inadequate to the tasks at hand, these warnings were dismissed as petty concerns of "bean counters."

But conscious U.S. policy decisions were only part of what undercut reform efforts. U.S. diplomats and bureaucrats have been busily following their own agendas, regardless of official policy.

U.S. diplomats in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Rome, Nairobi, and other UN locations, backed by State Department officials in Washington, have fought tirelessly to adopt new, or expand existing, UN economic, social, and development programs which could wind up costing the U.S. Treasury even more than peacekeeping. Promotion of these poorly planned and organized initiatives has often taken place at lavish world conferences, in cities such as Peking, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Copenhagen, Paris, and Cairo, each costing millions of dollars. The U.S. enthusiastically supported all of them.

How did the U.S. allow itself to become entrapped in such wasteful boondoggles? State Department officials, particularly political appointees serving in high-level ambassadorial positions, are by their background and training eager to cultivate professional and personal relations with delegates from other countries. Within the UN, decisions to support costly new initiatives are often influenced by a desire to maintain or improve relations with the countries sponsoring the program.

UN activities which were clearly boondoggles could thus count on having avid supporters within the U.S. Government. For example, in 1991 the U.S. delegation proposed elimination of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), established in 1955 as part of President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" initiative. Only a handful of U.S. officials knew this organization still existed; even fewer knew what it did or could come up with any justification for it based on U.S. interests. Although the Austrian delegation blocked its elimination (UNSCEAR is situated in Vienna), the General Assembly requested a study to identify possible savings in the program.

Several months after this decision, the U.S. Mission in New York received an angry telegram from the State Department demanding to know why the U.S. delegation had supported such a dangerous move. Those responsible for UNSCEAR at the State Department obviously had not read the U.S. Mission's telegram recommending its termination. State reacted only when the UN official (a U.S. national) who ran UNSCEAR's office contacted Washington, perhaps out of fear that his job might be eliminated. Nothing resulted from the study, and the angry response by State served as a warning to would-be budget-cutters and reformers.

THE most serious disaster for reform was suffered in the effort to establish a UN Office of Inspector General (OIG), as mandated by the United States Congress. The U.S. Mission's initial blueprint, based on the statutes establishing U.S. Inspector General Offices, was thoroughly undermined by senior officials of the Clinton Administration. The UN Secretariat, which received a leaked copy of the Mission's paper, lobbied Washington, protesting that this plan violated the secretary general's authority and imposed unacceptable constraints on the UN's way of doing business. Even the U.S. General Accounting Office, which had proposed a UN OIG many years before, collaborated with foreign officials in the effort to sink the U.S. Mission's plan.

An OIG was anathema not only to the Secretariat, but to the vast majority of UN members as well. In 1993, shortly after President Clinton endorsed the OIG concept in his speech before the General Assembly, Canada circulated a memorandum among major UN contributors which stated that the OIG "conjured up Gestapo-like images," a charge which senior U.S. Mission officials refused to condemn publicly.

The U.S. proposal submitted to the General Assembly one year later reflected the major changes demanded by the Secretariat and member states. The U.S. draft would be weakened further during formal negotiations in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary). The lead U.S. representative, Ambassador Victor Marrero, had never attended a Fifth Committee session before and had no expertise in the subject. He proved all too willing to concede major provisions to other delegations, especially those from Western Europe, the strongest opponents of the OIG concept.

The body that finally emerged from these negotiations, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, has, after more than two years of operation, proved to be no more effective than the oversight mechanisms it replaced. The Office lacks independence from the secretary general and it lacks adequate resources, particularly experienced investigators and auditors. Its record of accomplishment is extremely poor. For example, millions of dollars in equipment and cash were stolen in Bosnia, Cambodia, Mozambique, and Somalia, and none of this has been recovered. At her confirmation hearing, Secretary of State - designate Madeleine Albright said that rather than a "junk-yard dog" the OIOS was no more than a "puppy." She was absolutely right. However, as a result of her mishandling of the issue while she was ambassador to the UN, the OIOS is unlikely ever to develop much in the way of teeth.

Ambassador Albright may have singlehandedly deposed Secretary General Boutros-Ghali, cultivating an image of toughness, but the result of her effort may mean even less progress toward reform. The new secretary general, considered by insiders a "lightweight" on substance, gave no indication in his previous positions (in the Department of Administration and Management, and as head of the Department for Peacekeeping Operations) that he possesses the ability or the inclination to pursue real reform. The Clinton Administration's much-touted Presidential Decision Directive 25, aimed at a comprehensive reform of UN peacekeeping, got little support from Annan. In time, Kofi Annan will prove to be an albatross around Madeleine Albright's neck.

Mrs. Albright's record of success in other areas of UN reform was equally unimpressive. U.S. delegation members responsible for implementing what remained of our UN reform policy were subjected to continual harassment during her tenure. Specific initiatives designed to cut costs or curb the bureaucracy were dismissed as UN-bashing or as the failed ideas of previous (Republican) administrations. U.S. delegates to the Fifth Committee were instructed to remain silent when mismanagement and waste were evident, particularly where programs on which the United States placed a high priority were involved. For example, U.S. delegates were prohibited from drawing attention to the obvious duplication and waste in the UN's Center for Human Rights and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Under-Secretary General for Administration and Management Joseph Connor, an American national, demanded and often received U.S. support for Secretariat proposals that did not meet congressional expectations for reform. For all the rhetoric of the past four years, U.S. assessments remain unchanged; outdated, ineffective programs and bureaucracies continue to receive funding; management of peacekeeping operations is in disarray; and, for the first time in UN history, there is no U.S. expert on the most important and influential UN budgetary oversight body, the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions.

As U.S. arrears increased, Ambassador Albright and her deputies tolerated an excessive degree of name-calling and U.S.-bashing by the Secretariat and member states. The fact that as much as $6.6 billion in goods and services were contributed by the Defense Department to UN peacekeeping operations was swept under the rug by the State Department and Mrs. Albright's U.S. Mission. The only statements on the subject of U.S. contributions concerned the damage to the United States' credibility that our debts were causing, together with pleas to Congress that it drop demands for further reform and pay up.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the Clinton Administration's recent request for $1 billion to pay U.S. arrears does not depend on any further UN reform. While Boutros-Ghali expressed little interest in the issue during his last years in office, replacing him did not significantly alter the dynamics of the General Assembly, which remains extremely hostile to any reform proposal.

Thus, Mrs. Albright's sacking of Boutros-Ghali was no more than a cynical ploy to assure her appointment as secretary of state. It was not coincidental that she was nominated to the post the day after Boutros-Ghali suspended his re-election campaign. Given these circumstances, it is unconscionable for the Administration to treat Mrs. Albright's billion-dollar promise as anything other than a personal debt incurred to further her own career interests.

After more than a decade of trying to have it both ways, the UN is overextended, underfunded, and incapable of doing all that the U.S. and the other 184 members expect. Given the Clinton Administration's commitment to a balanced budget, and the sacrifices that demands of Americans, the U.S. must no longer follow policies which add to the cost of membership while paying no more than lip service to UN reform. Congress, which has provided the only real leadership on UN reform over the past ten years, must not waver. It should enforce the relevant provisions of P.L. 103-236 and consider new legislation, if necessary, until the task is completed.