United Nations/Ted Turner:Friend or Foes?

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Bleary-eyed delegates from 189 countries reached informal agreement Saturday on a major overhaul of U.N. finances after South Korea dropped last-minute demands that threatened to unravel a deal to cut U.S. payments to the world body.

After round-the-clock negotiations, the General Assembly's budget committee finally agreed on the budget reform package and went almost immediately into a formal session to adopt it by consensus. The deal must then be approved at a formal General Assembly meeting.

When the informal agreement was announced, delegates trying to reach a settlement and get home for holidays burst into applause. Many wound up sitting in a conference room for more than seven hours during the night doing nothing while diplomats telephoned their capitals trying to find a way to break the impasse.

Before dawn, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan telephoned South Korean President Kim Dae-jung,though it wasn't immediately known whether he got through, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke to the deputy foreign minister. U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Stephen Bosworth, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke and European leaders also joined in the search for a solution, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

On Friday, the United States appeared to have won a battle to reduce its share of the U.N. budget - the centerpiece of the U.N. financing overhaul - after media tycoon Ted Turner offered a $34 million one-time gift. Turner's donation would cover the shortfall the U.S cut creates in the main U.N. budget in 2001.

The revamping also saw Japan's share cut significantly and 18 developing countries agreeing to pay more to make up the shortfall - key among them South Korea, Singapore and Brazil.

But the South Koreans suddenly announced they would not join consensus on resolutions enshrining the agreements - which is crucial before they can be adopted by the General Assembly - unless several demands were met, Western diplomats said.

In the current budget for U.N. peacekeeping operations, whose payment structure was decided in 1973, South Korea got an 80 percent discount on its assessment. Under the deal hammered out during months of negotiations, the South Koreans agreed to eliminate the discount over five years.

Early Saturday, however, they demanded to pay a lower percentage and a review of their payments after three years, which would have unraveled the carefully crafted agreement.

But diplomats said that after intense pressure from U.S. and other officials the South Koreans dropped all the demands.

"We are trying our best to defend our national interest," a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said in the capital, Seoul, before the agreement.

"It's in our national interest to pay less, but the United States and the European Union don't like our position.They demand that we increase our payment faster than we want. We want more gradual increases in our payments," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The South Korean demands brought negotiations to a halt, and some diplomats expressed dismay that months of hard work could be lost.

Some countries also disagreed on the timing of the introduction of the new payment schedule for the peacekeeping budget - with the United States demanding Jan. 1 to comply with Congressional demands and Britain and China calling for July 1 which would delay higher payments for both countries by six months.That issue was also resolved, diplomats said.

The United States waged a yearlong campaign to cajole 188 reluctant and often resentful countries to accept the U.S. cuts. Holbrooke said the United States was facing defeat until Turner made his dramatic bequest -believed to be the first ever by an individual to pay a government's U.N. dues.

The United Nations bars individual contributions for such purposes. Turner is giving the $34 million to the State Department and earmarking it to solve the budget problem. The Clinton administration's attorneys cleared the arrangement, but there was reportedly some concern on Capitol Hill about its legality.

"It's perfectly legal," Holbrooke said. "I cannot imagine that anyone would question the value of it.

"Ted Turner's offer provided us with the flexibility that he had intended it to. It was an extraordinary demonstration of how to use philanthropic money for leveraging effect," he said.

The Turner deal was critically important because most countries have already approved their budgets for 2001. They therefore had no money to pick up the $34 million shortfall the cut in the U.S. contribution to the regular budget would create next year.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said Turner's contribution "has been crucial in lubricating the first year" of the deal.

Under the deal reached early Friday, the U.S. share of the administrative budget would drop from 25 percent to 22 percent. Its share of the peacekeeping budget would be reduced from 31 percent to around 27 percent -still more than the 25 percent the U.S. Congress demanded.

Now the United States has to sell the deal to Congress, which has been holding back on paying part of the $1.8 billion the country owes the United Nations. Congress had demanded cuts in the U.S. share of the budget as a condition for payment.

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week he might be able to convince lawmakers to amend legislation and send the check even without the full peacekeeping reduction.

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., is the conservative committee chairman who has spearheaded the campaign to cut U.S. dues. He told Holbrooke in recent days "to get the best deal he could and we would review it in the New Year and that's what we intend to do," spokesman Marc Thiessen said.

State Department officials said Albright spoke to both Helms and Biden on Friday.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), December 23, 2000

Answers

Anybody that can bag Jane Fonda has my respect. Said that about Jerry Brown and Linda Rhonstadt too. Never was too sure about Jerry & Linda. Still, Ted's hefted up some serious bucks for stuff that seems worthwhile.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), December 23, 2000.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001222/ts/un_usa_dc_6.html

Friday December 22 11:42 PM ET

Turner Helps U.S. Reach Deal on UN Budget

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Media mogul Ted Turner helped the United States win a 16-month battle to cut its payments to United Nations (news - web sites) by donating $34 million, key in closing the deal with 188 countries.

But although a new system of paying for U.N. administrative and peacekeeping budgets was agreed in principle early on Friday, working out the details has proved more difficult than expected, delaying a final agreement for hours.

The 189-member General Assembly had been set to approve the accord on its $1 billion annual regular administrative budget and $3 billion peacekeeping budget late on Friday.

But as Saturday approached, the restructuring of assessments, the amount each country must pay to the U.N. budget, had not yet been approved.

For one, diplomats said, Britain had insisted the new system of payments for peacekeeping, which cost it more money, go into force in mid-July rather than January. Another was a demand from developing nations that the new system stay in place another decade but the European Union (news - web sites) objected.

The United States currently owes the world body more than $1.5 billion, having given itself a unilateral deduction in payments over the last few years.

The new arrangements would cut the U.S. share of the U.N. administrative budget from 25 percent to 22 percent, as Congress demanded. Washington's share of the peacekeeping budget would fall from 30 percent to about 26-27 percent, a bit higher than Congress mandated.

The Turner donation, a key move in months of complex negotiations, was ``crucial in lubricating the first year'' of the deal, according to British ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock.

The $34 million from Turner, founder of CNN television, was to make up the gap in the administrative budget next year caused by the U.S. cuts. Many nations, such as Russia, South Korea, Brazil, Chile, Iran, Czech Republic, Poland, Thailand and Singapore will be allowed to stagger their respective increases over three years.

Turner three years ago wanted to pay the entire $1 billion U.S. debt but was not allowed to under U.N. rules. Instead he made a $1 billion gift to special U.N. humanitarian projects.

The United Nations does not allow individuals to pay a government's debt. But Washington permits gifts earmarked for special purposes, with the approval of Congress.

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has spent the 16 months he has served as the chief U.S. envoy at the United Nations lobbying for American cuts in the budget, amid anger at the mounting American debt to the world body.

He said Turner's offer had given him some flexibility in negotiating an accord. ``People give money all the time, and I commend them for it. But you have to go a long way to find a gift that made as much difference as this one,'' he said.

Turner, in a brief statement said: ``It's an honor to play a part in these important negotiations since the U.N. is vital to the future of this planet.''

U.S. officials said Holbrooke would have to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by conservative North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, to get a rider to Helms' original bill that set 22 percent for the administrative budget and a 25 percent maximum for peacekeeping.

Under a bill Helms sponsored in the U.S. Congress, which President Clinton (news - web sites) signed, Washington refused to remit funds earmarked for the world body until U.S. rates were cut and gave a unilateral reduction several years ago.

More than $72 million, the second of three payments that could total $926 million, can be paid to the United Nations next year by Congress because of the U.S. payment cuts.

``For the United Nations, this is something very considerable because we have had a real problem in terms of U.S.-U.N. relations over the last six years,'' Greenstock said.

Japan, now paying some 20.5 percent of the budget, is to get a rate decrease to just under 20 percent, diplomats said. With an economy less than half the size of the United States, negotiators said the Japanese parliament would not swallow Tokyo paying nearly the same rate as Washington.

-- (news@of.note), December 23, 2000.


C&P thread death.

Pity. Nobody reads this shit past the opening poster.

Let's us don't do this anymore.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), December 23, 2000.


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