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Kofi Annan Blames U.S. Politicians for Backlog of U.N. Payments Kofi Annan Blames U.S. Politicians
for Backlog of U.N. Payments
Nando Media
March 9, 1999U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said politicians in Washington - not the American people - are to blame for the U.S. failure to pay $1.3 billion in arrears to the United Nations. "I have spent too much time with ordinary Americans ... to blame them for their government's inability to honor its obligations to the United Nations," he said Tuesday. "The problem is in Washington, and only Washington can solve it."
Annan made his comments in a speech to the United Nations Association of the United States of America, which is spearheading a new campaign to lobby support across the country and in Congress to pay the debt. The campaign announced Monday that Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation has allocated $12 million over the next two years for the lobbying effort.
Last year, President Clinton vetoed legislation that would have paid off a chunk of the U.S. arrears because of what he called unrelated abortion restrictions tacked on to the bill by Republicans. The amendment would bar U.S. funds from being used to support international family-planning groups that lobby foreign governments to liberalize their abortion laws. Congress has previously held up payments of U.N. debts to demand a reduction in the U.S. share of the budget and a streamlining of the world organization. Annan claims he has largely come through with the demanded reforms.
The secretary-general, who held talks with Clinton and congressional leaders in Washington last month, said he welcomed new efforts to tackle U.S. arrears and hoped they succeed. "Over the last two years, I have sought to convince Washington of the need to put the issue of the U.S. arrears behind us, once and for all - above all, for Washington's own sake," Annan said. He said the association's public activities would help to ensure "that America's role in the United Nations of the next century will be as vital as it has been in the century we are about to leave."
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