The United States, which pays 22 per cent of the UN’s regular annual budget of $1.8 billion, has arrogantly demanded a dominant voice in management and administration — primarily because it is the biggest single financial contributor to the world body. “UN member states, and particularly its largest contributors, want to know if they are getting the most value for the dollars they contribute,” says Mark P Lagon, the US deputy assistant secretary for international organisation affairs.

“People who look to the UN for help want to know that, too,” he told the Committee on International Relations of the US House of Representatives this year. But what he failed to tell the committee is what the US, in turn, extracts from the UN — financially and politically. According to the latest figures released by the UN, the US has consistently held the number one spot in grabbing UN procurement contracts, averaging over 22.5 per cent of all UN purchases annually. “On a cost-benefit ratio, the US gets as much or even more than what it gives to the UN,” says a senior UN official.

The scale of assessments for each of the 192 member states is determined every three years on the basis of “capacity to pay” — including GNP. Ranking behind the US in budgetary payments are Japan (19.5 per cent of the UN’s regular budget), Germany (8.6 per cent), Britain (6.1 per cent), France (6.0 per cent) and Italy (4.8 per cent). The 25-member EU claims it is the largest contributor because collectively it accounts for 37 per cent of the budget.

Besides the UN Secretariat, New York City also hosts several UN agencies, including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN’s children agency UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). According to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the UN and its agencies (along with the huge diplomatic corps) contributed about $3.2 billion annually to the city’s economy in the late 1990s. The figure may be considerably higher.

Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, says that it is worse than unseemly for the US to complain about the number of dollars that it sends to the UN that Washington has been doing so much to undermine the UN Charter. Solomon noted that the US leads the world in the international arms trade, undermining UN efforts to implement its programmes. This form of global leadership does incalculable damage to the humanitarian mission of the UN, he said.

Solomon said, the advantages of having the UN headquartered in the US include the fact that this makes it so easy for Washington to eavesdrop on UN diplomats in violation of the Headquarters Agreement for the UN, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN.

For such improper spying activities directed from Washington, it is very convenient to have the UN headquarters in New York, he noted. “Perhaps the US government should be assessed a special user fee in recognition of this convenience,” Solomon added. — IPS