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REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The U.N.'s Tipping Point
The real reformer is John Bolton, not Kofi Annan.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 12:01 a.m.
Today--maybe, possibly, fingers crossed, and if Jupiter is in the Seventh House--the Senate will vote for cloture in the debate over John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, meaning he will at last get the up-or-down vote he has been denied for months. And barring further surprises--no ruling those out, either--Mr. Bolton will be confirmed, meaning he may finally get down to the serious work that confronts the United States at the U.N, particularly in the matter of organizational reform.
For those who are genuine friends of the U.N.'s better ambitions--and we count ourselves among them--the pity is this didn't happen a lot sooner. While Senate Democrats Joe Biden and Chris Dodd have been tearing open every mattress to find evidence of Mr. Bolton's sinful behavior--and finding none--the gravity of the U.N.'s internal crises have only become more apparent.
Thus a bipartisan report on the U.N., released today and written by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, notes that "until and unless it changes dramatically, the United Nations will remain an uncertain instrument, both for the governments that comprise it and for those who look to it for salvation."
Messrs. Biden and Dodd deny that this is what they want, but it is what they will surely get if the Bush Administration cannot entrust the cause of reform to one of its own--which is one reason why Mark Malloch Brown, the U.N. Secretariat's chief of staff, has told us that he's enthusiastic about Mr. Bolton's prospective ambassadorship.
As for the Democrats, they seem so afraid of sending a strong U.S. voice to Turtle Bay that they have taken to inventing new reasons every week to deny Mr. Bolton a vote. Pat Roberts, the patient Kansan who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent Messrs. Biden and Dodd a letter yesterday all but calling their latest hunting trip through classified material an act of bad faith. "I am prepared to assist in any reasonable effort to examine the facts," Mr. Roberts said yesterday. "But an examination of upwards of 40 names appears to be an effort to preserve the issue, not to resolve it." We'd take out the "appears to be" and suggest that Republicans start calling Democrats the protectors of the U.N. status quo.
Meanwhile, Henry Hyde, who chairs the House International Relations Committee, is sponsoring legislation that would condition America's U.N. dues--currently some $500 million a year, or about 22% of the U.N.'s core budget--on reform. A floor vote is expected this week. This has the U.N.'s American lobby in a lather of indignation, claiming Mr. Hyde plans to stop paying U.N. dues as Jesse Helms did in the 1990s.
In fact, only the threat of withholding U.S. funds induced any U.N. improvement in the 1990s. The Hyde bill would require 18 U.N. agencies to become independently funded, as the U.N.'s Development Program and the World Health Organization already are, with a view toward becoming transparent and effective. Failing that, some U.S. funding would be redirected toward worthier U.N. efforts, internal oversight foremost among them.
But perhaps the gravest indication of the U.N.'s crisis comes in the form of the disclosure of a 1998 memorandum indicating that Kofi Annan may have lied to Paul Volcker's Independent Inquiry investigating the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal.
The memo, written by an employee of the Swiss Inspections Company Cotecna that was then bidding for an Oil for Food contract, indicates that the Secretary-General and his "entourage" met in Paris with representatives of Cotecna in November 1998: "Their collective advice was that . . . we could count on their support." Cotecna, which also employed Mr. Annan's son Kojo, won the contract the following month. Yet the Secretary-General has steadfastly insisted he had no knowledge of their bid, and he now says through a spokesman that he "has no recollection" of the Paris exchange.
Previously, Mr. Volcker's committee had bent over backward to give him the benefit of the doubt, going so far as to "refresh" the Secretary-General's memory over previous episodes he failed to recollect. But now a source close to the investigation tells us that "if there isn't a plausible disaffirmation" of the Cotecna memo, Mr. Annan's credibility will have been exhausted and his future at the U.N. will be very much in doubt. By the way, Kojo Annan continues not to cooperate with the Volcker inquiry.
All of which is to say that while the U.N. is approaching its nadir, there is also an opportunity here to make a fresh start. From what we've seen of it, the Gingrich-Mitchell report offers a far more useful blueprint for reform than the one recently given by Mr. Annan. We are particularly impressed by its demand for a permanent Independent Oversight Board to prevent future Oil for Food scandals; for more effective mechanisms to prevent Rwandan-style genocides; for the creation of a democracy coalition within the U.N.; and for an end to Israel's second-class treatment within the organization.
Mr. Hyde's legislation also deserves support. The U.N. bodies it targets for reform, such as the Relief and Works Agency that has helped sustain the Palestinian refugee crisis for over half a century, do not deserve continued U.S. funding under any circumstances. Creating a permanent mechanism to enforce standards and budgetary discipline on the U.N. can only help the body's credibility and effectiveness.
Above all, the prospective combination of Mr. Bolton's arrival to the U.N.--and Mr. Annan's departure from it--suggests an organization with the potential to be taken seriously by the United States. With this month being the 60th anniversary of the creation of the U.N., we can hardly think of more auspicious timing.
