Time to Pay U.N. Dues

The Senate may vote today on legislation to pay the United Nations more than $800 million that Washington owes in delinquent dues and assessments. To renege on that obligation leaves this richest of nations looking like a deadbeat. Worse, it alienates other U.N. members whose support for U.S. foreign policy objectives is often important and sometimes vital.

But even if the measure passes, the debt issue seems destined to remain unresolved, for the Senate, like the House, has attached to the measure a ban on using any U.S. funds for international family planning programs that perform or advocate abortions. The White House says that provision invites a presidential veto.

While some future compromise on the scope of the anti-abortion rider might be possible, the two sides for now appear unyielding. That means the debt problem is likely to linger, a captive of American social politics on an issue largely off the horizon of U.S. foes and allies alike, promising an embarrassing foreign policy burden for the United States.

Congressional opposition to meeting the American arrears grew originally in the conservative camp out of frustration with the bloated size and rising costs of the U.N. secretariat. Payment of the U.S. debt was made contingent on bureaucratic reforms. The current U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has expanded efforts begun under his predecessor to reduce the U.N. staff and cut costs. Considerable progress has been made, and that helped move along the Clinton administration’s negotiations on debt payment with congressional leaders of the anti-U.N. movement. But the addition of the anti-abortion rider raises a new and unfitting barrier.

The United States is contractually committed to paying its fair percentage of U.N. costs, based on its share of the world’s wealth. Settlement of the U.N. debt issue ought to be kept wholly separate from the abortion issue, which is being used as a deal-killer by those who want the debt to remain unpaid. This political leveraging of unrelated issues is not in the United States’ international interests.