More UNESCO trouble

In the ongoing battle between the U.S. and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the U.S. employed a tactic last week that one UNESCO official called "psychological warfare." A confidential study by the Congress's General Accounting Office that harshly criticizes UNESCO was leaked to the press. The report charges the agency's Senegalese director, General Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, with large-scale inefficiency and mismanagement. Said M'Bow: "I was elected by all the 161 member states to head the organization . .. and not one of them can force me to hand in my resignation."

The 157-page study, which took six months to prepare, surfaced just one week before UNESCO's executive board was scheduled to discuss the proposals of its Western members for improving the organization. The U.S. has announced it will pull out of the agency at the end of 1984 unless UNESCO changes its ways. The U.S. says UNESCO has a pro-Third World, anti-Western bias. A withdrawal by the U.S., which contributes roughly one-fourth of UNESCO's budget, could lead to financial collapse for the agency.