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Eric Rouleau: "Why Washington Wants to Oust Mr. Boutros-Ghali"
"Why Washington Wants to Oust Mr. Boutros Ghali"
By Eric Rouleau
("Pourquoi Washington veut ecarter M. Boutros-Ghali")
Le Monde Diplomatique, November, 1996, p. 14
Note: Rouleau was born in Egypt and worked for many years as the Middle East correspondent of Le Monde. On two occasions he served in the French diplomatic corps as ambassador -- to Tunisia and later to Turkey. His thinking in this article represents the thinking of much of the French political establishment. It also provides a useful interpretation that considers inter-state rivalries and the battleground over how the global economy will be organized.
What follows is partly a loose translation and partly a summary:
It's unheard of -- the Secretary General of the UN accused by the United States of being "an obstacle to reform," incapable, pretentious, a megalomaniac and even corrupt! Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali has been called on to step down, or else he will be vetoed.The world's only superpower has declared war on the man who enjoys the sympathy of the great majority of member states of the UN. Madeleine Albright says cooly that her government's decision is "irrevocable" and the Egyptian must depart, whatever the judgement of the international community.
The US government has been floating anonymous and unproved accusations in the press and last summer accused the SG of using UN funds to advance his re-election campaign. His spokesman, Sylvana Foa, enraged, called this accusation "practices that recall the McCarthy era."
But in spite of the impression Foa's remarks might convey, the SG is no radical. Quite the opposite. Born into an important and wealthy family, Boutros-Ghali is seen in his own country as an enlightened conservative. President Sadat raised him to the top of the Egyptian foreign service, where he served as an architect of the Camp David accords, attracting harsh criticism from Arab nationalists, leftists and Islamists. The US press mentioned his advantages as a candidate for Secretary General in 1991 -- African, Arab, but Christian (he is a Copt), with a wife from an important Jewish Egyptian family, not to mention his anti-Communist and pro-Israeli credentials.
His first candidacy was originally supported strongly by France. The United States was luke warm, but came around finally, for lack of other promising candidates.
The US was apparently looking for a pliant UN head, who would go along with US hegemony, and there was concern that he was not the right person. In fact, Boutros-Ghali did not share the US vision of the "post Cold War world." He saw a world body that would assume more responsibility and wrote two major reports "Agenda for Peace" and "Agenda for Development" that set out his ideas.
The US didn't like this view and met the reports with skepticism and teeth-grinding. Madeleine Albright, with her characteristic brusque manner, charged that the Secretary General just wanted to increase his own power. His ideas like preventative diplomacy, rapid deployment forces and global taxes were seen as gravely misplaced.
In a speech on 25 June 1995, Ms. Albright proposed that the Secretary General should conduct himself as the "chief administrative officer" of the UN -- that is America wanted to deal with a simple bureaucrat who would carry out its orders. This logic led finally to Boutros-Ghali's dismissal -- an executive who the boss considered unsatisfactory.
But was Boutros-Ghali an "obstacle to reform" as the US claims? In fact, the results of his tenure have been remarkable: personnel down by 25%, top posts reduced by 40%, budget down by $119 million. Washington nevertheless is not satisfied.
The SG has pointed out that the main strain on the UN budget has been due to the increase in the Peacekeeping budget, which took place with the concurrence of the United States. But this is no reason for Washington not to pay its debt to the organization, which has risen to $1.5 billion, more than half of the total owed by all states. In a speech last January in London, Boutros-Ghali denounced the "dishonesty of those who make the UN inefficient by depriving it of indispensable funds, while refusing to pay out funds on the grounds that it is inefficient."
The SG's Thirdworldishness, even though very moderate, irritates the US establishment, especially the conservatives. He spoke of the Bosnian conflict as the "rich man's war," while accusing the US of being passive in the face of starvation in Somalia and genocide in Rwanda. He opposed NATO bombing of Serbs. And last April he published the results of an inquiry into the Israeli shelling of a UN camp in Lebanon, infuriating the Clinton administration. Perhaps that was the last straw.
Mr. Clinton evidently decided not to give Republicans the chance to be the sole defenders of American "sovereignty" in the presidential election campaign. Mr. Dole frequently in his speeches insisted that engagement of US forces must be decided in Washington and not in New York, by the President of the United States and not "Bu Bu." Dole himself is needled by the right wing of his own party. Sen. Jesse Helms, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on August 21st that the US should give an "ultimatum" to the UN -- reform radically or the US will withdraw. In the same vein, Congressman Joe Scarborough submitted a bill to the House of Representatives which would withdraw the US from the UN and create instead a "League of Democracies."
James Phillips, political analyst at the ultra conservative Heritage Foundation, suggests that the UN must be purged of its "statism" and "socialism" and that the organization should refuse to provide aid to needy states "on the basis of utopian objectives such as the eradication of poverty and the provision of health care for all."
So the debate goes well beyond the personality of Mr. Boutros-Ghali. Post Cold War America wants to appropriate the United Nations for its own purposes. And it is no accident that a number of major states have proclaimed their support for Boutros-Ghali, including France, Germany, China, Russia, Japan, Africa (through the OAU) and Canada.
Will there be a clash in the Security Council? And in case of a stand-off, will the matter go to the General Assembly? It is legally possible, for Trygve Lie was re-elected by the GA in spite of a Soviet veto in the Security Council in 1950. It all depends on the determination and will of the parties, particularly the members of the Security Council, not to accede to the American diktat. Also, it depends on Washington and its willingness to avoid a clash that would lessen the prestige of the United States and the credibility of the United Nations.
