Threat by U.S. to Veto a Boutros-Ghali Second Term Stirs Resentment

by Ian Williams

In June, the White House declared that it would use its veto to prevent Boutros Boutros-Ghali from assuming a second term as U.N. secretary-general. The firmness of the declaration surprised many U.N. delegates—and upset them as well.

Until the U.S. began to wield it regularly on behalf of Israel, American envoys scorned the veto as a blunt and somewhat dishonorable diplomatic weapon, and mocked the Soviets for their frequent use of it. It showed, U.S. leaders said, that Moscow’s arguments were unpersuasive. Indeed, in those days the U.S. used to pay its U.N. dues promptly, to show up the Soviets who were perpetually in arrears. The Soviets disclaimed bills for peacekeeping operations they had not approved. The Americans told the Soviets such bills were legal obligations.

Since then, the regular votes of the rest of the world against U.S. and Israeli positions on the Middle East have considerably coarsened the tone of American diplomacy. Although the U.S. presently is a billion-and-a-half dollars in arrears on its U.N. dues, the Clinton administration has told the rest of the world that no matter what they all think, the U.S. will decide who the secretary-general will be.

The announcement upset almost all of America’s allies and friends. Ironically, even administration officials admit that whenever the State Department, the White House, and the U.S. mission to the U.N. actually could agree on what U.S. policy was, Boutros-Ghali delivered.

So why do they want him out? That Boutros-Ghali is an Arab, who occasionally reminds people of U.N. decisions, certainly is one factor. Under Madeleine Albright, the U.S. mission to the U.N. all too often has out-hawked the Israeli mission. For instance, at the time of the massacre in Hebron, there was a stark contrast between the mildness of the Israeli response, and the alacrity with which U.S. press officer James Rubin jumped to condemn the secretary-general for his offer of U.N. peacekeepers for Hebron.

Recently, following the Qana massacre, the secretary-general also had the temerity to condemn and deplore the Israeli shelling of refugees in the U.N. camp, and published the U.N. report suggesting either fore-knowledge or criminal negligence by the Israeli forces.

That certainly upset some more rabidly pro-Israeli types who were provoked into loud discussions concerning his suitability. A few more sensible ones, including Abe Rosenthal, who in his New York Times column was for once not “Out of His Mind,” pointed out the secretary-general’s seminal role at Camp David in laying the groundwork for any kind of peace in the Middle East.

The U.S. mission to the U.N. all too often has out-hawked the Israeli mission.

However, when the White House announced its opposition, the official reason was that the administration of President Bill Clinton did not think that Boutros-Ghali would be a suitable figure to reform the U.N., which the administration accused of the usual waste, corruption and mismanagement. There is indeed some of all of those, but delegates to the U.N. know that those occupying the position of undersecretary-general in charge of U.N. administration and management have for a long time been Americans nominated by U.S. presidents. And to put the perennial accusations of waste and corruption at the U.N. in perspective, the same month that the U.S. launched its crusade against Boutros-Ghali, the New York attorney general claimed that city businesses were overpaying $500 million a year to Mafia-controlled waste haulers—which is equivalent to half the U.N.’s entire budget. It is no wonder that Madeleine Albright’s strident sermons are increasingly met with glazed looks from her colleagues.

On a larger scale, Madeleine Albright has made it plain that she does not want an activist secretary-general, nor for that matter an activist United Nations. She wants one that will keep its nose out of matters like the Middle East, where it represents a position that the U.S. does not like, but will get involved wherever the U.S. wants the buck to stop on the East River.

Whoever is elected as secretary-general will have to defend U.N. decisions, including some that the current U.S. administration may not like, such as the legal position on Jerusalem, or on the illegality of West Bank settlements, even though those decisions were approved by Clinton’s predecessors.

Not only did the White House not consult its friends abroad about its unilateral announcement, it does not seem to have given the slightest thought to potential successors, which reinforces the general impression that the welfare of the United Nations and global diplomacy are not major factors in the move.

Pre-Emptive Capitulation

So what did motivate the White House announcement? While anti-Arab and pro-Israeli feelings probably helped, the most likely explanation is President Bill Clinton’s penchant for pre-emptive capitulationand his basic ineptitude. He seems to have thought that Bob Dole was going to make a campaign issue out of Boutros-Ghali’s desire for a second term.

It is indeed true that Senator Dole is no fan of Boutros-Ghali, and has made some justified criticisms of the secretary-general over UNPROFOR’s appeasement of the Serbs. Nonetheless, any discussion of Boutros-Ghali’s suitability would raise the question of his agewhich is slightly less than Bob Dole’s, and so not an issue which the retired senator from Kansas would want raised. It also seems very unlikely that American voters are keenly interested in the question of who occupies the desk on the 38th floor of the U.N. building.

Possibly Clinton team members saw the post-Qana ripple of journalistic acidity about Boutros-Ghali as a foretaste of a Dole campaign. Since it coincided with many of their own prejudices anyway, they decided to run with it, in the process ditching Boutros-Ghali the same way they ditched their friends like Lani Guinier when the American neo-conservatives took off against her.

So what has the affair achieved? Boutros-Ghali is extremely stubborn, and in nothing so much as when his personal pride is threatened. He has declared that he will run for a second term, and has varying degrees of support from the rest of the permanent five on the Security Council. Britain, France and Russia owe him for his compliance over Bosnia—and he was France’s candidate anyway.

China owes him for his support in banning Taiwanese and Tibetans from the U.N. premises and is rumored to have pledged to veto any other candidate who is put up to replace him. The Arabs know that they are unlikely to get another Arab as secretary-general. Even the Iraqis, if faced with a choice between Boutros-Ghali and Washington’s candidate, will have little difficulty in choosing.

Officially, Boutros-Ghali is the African candidate, and the OAU conference in Yaounde has just recommended that its members support him again, even though U.S. diplomats were offering a “You can have another African—but only if you ditch him” deal. However, since U.S. aid to Africa is vanishingly small, there is little that the U.S. can do to twist arms. Against that, Boutros-Ghali has the enthusiastic endorsement of Nelson Mandela and Jacques Chirac—whose writ runs unchallenged through most of Francophone Africa.

It seems that Boutros-Ghali’s team is relying on at least two factors. The first is that firmness in the face of opposition is hardly Bill Clinton’s most outstanding characteristic. He regularly eats his own words as if they were french fries garnished with salt and ketchup. However, this is not true of matters concerning Israel, where he has always delivered. So if a combination of hard-line American Likudniks and the new Israeli prime minister decide to make an issue out of the U.N. succession, there definitely will be a fight to the finish.

If there is such a fight, who would win? Ironically, the U.S. itself provided a precedent. In 1950 the Soviet Union vetoed the reappointment of the first secretary-general, Trygve Lie. Led by the U.S., which then thought that vetoes in general, and this one in particular, were unreasonable, the issue was referred to the General Assembly, which reappointed him for a further three years.

“A veto can be vetoed,” claimed the current secretary-general’s spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, with scenarios like this in mind.

Even if the U.S. is successful, it will be at the cost of considerable diplomatic credit and after a battle that would leave the U.N. badly scarred. Nor would there be any guarantee that a successor would be any more successful in getting the arrears of payment out of the U.S. than his predecessor. The know-nothings in Congress would be no more forthcoming about the candidacy of Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa or Winston Churchill as secretary-general. It is the institution that they abhor.

In any case, the U.S. is unlikely to find a more amenable secretary-general, since the combination of characteristics it wants strength enough to carry out reforms and weakness enough to do exactly as he is told by the U.S.is unlikely to be found in the same person. If anything, some of the successors touted, like Mary Robinson, the current president of Ireland, would be even less likely to take expedient dictation from the White House, whether directly or at second hand.

If, on the other hand, the U.S. is unsuccessful, it will have to deal with a secretary-general who has nothing to lose from taking a more independent stand, backed by a majority of countries who will have shown their exasperation at U.S. foreign policy, or lack of it, by supporting him.

In either case, the U.N. is likely to be weakened even further, which can only be good news for those, from Belgrade to Tel Aviv, who want to flout international law with impunity.