United Nations Peace on the March

By Michael S. Serrill

It began as a monument to postwar idealism, but for more than a decade the United Nations has been repeatedly condemned as a cockpit of Third World radicalism and bureaucratic waste. Few critics have been more severe than the U.S., which for the past three years has put a squeeze on the 159-member organization by withholding most of its $215 million annual dues as part of a campaign to force reform. Thus the turnaround could hardly have been more dramatic last week, when the Reagan Administration reversed the policy that had made it the world organization's biggest debtor. "The U.N. is directly serving long-term objectives of this Administration to end regional conflicts and advance peace and freedom around the world," declared White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, who added, "We are committed to full funding."

Fitzwater announced that the U.S. would begin paying back $540 million in overdue U.N. assessments. A check for $15.2 million was delivered last week, and the State Department has been ordered to come up with a plan for repaying the remainder by 1991.

The U.S. change of heart came just in time for the beleaguered organization on Manhattan's East River. The U.S. is supposed to pay 25% of the U.N.'s general operating revenues. Since Washington began withholding funds, the organization has been dangerously strapped for cash. In July U.N. Secretary- General Javier Perez de Cuellar met with Ronald Reagan to explain that the U.N. could run out of money as early as November.

The Administration's endorsement, which came only days before this week's opening of the 43rd annual U.N. General Assembly session, was viewed cynically in some circles. President Reagan is slated to make his final address to the General Assembly on Sept. 26; it was quickly noted that handing over large amounts of cash will undoubtedly warm his reception. The Administration's new embrace of the U.N., however, was hardly unqualified. Fitzwater said that reform of the organization is "incomplete," before adding that "the progress is striking."

The U.S. financial shift is the capstone of several U.N. triumphs and accomplishments. In the past eight months, a number of the world's more intractable conflicts have begun to yield to mediation, and though the U.N. cannot claim to be the sole cause of the breakthroughs, its efforts have played an important role. Among the high points:

-- In April, the Soviet Union, negotiating under U.N. auspices, agreed on a ! timetable for withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. The decision, which will bring all the soldiers home by early 1989, climaxed six years of U.N.-sponsored talks between the Soviet-sponsored Afghan government and Pakistan, chief supporter of Afghanistan's mujahedin rebels.

-- In July, Iran abruptly announced that it would accept U.N. Resolution 598 calling for a cease-fire in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Last month some 350 U.N. soldiers landed in both countries to observe the cease-fire.

-- In August, South Africa, Angola and Cuba agreed to a cease-fire in Angola and Namibia. Though their talks have been mediated by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker, the tentative peace plan calls for implementation of U.N. Resolution 435, with the world body supervising elections that would lead to Namibian independence.

-- Just three weeks ago in the Western Sahara, Morocco and the Polisario guerrilla forces accepted a U.N. plan to end almost 13 years of war.

The peace breakthroughs owe at least as much to the exhaustion of combatants and the warming climate of superpower relations as they do to U.N. efforts. Some Administration stalwarts insist that it was U.S. policies that wrought the change. "None of it would have happened," says one State Department official, "if there had not been Stinger missiles in the hands of the mujahedin, or if the U.S. had not escalated its presence in the Persian Gulf."

Another prime factor is the "new thinking" in the foreign policy of Mikhail Gorbachev, in which the U.N. is intended to play a prominent part. Well before the U.S. announcement, Moscow had begun reducing its own U.N. debt, from $112 million in 1985 to just $10 million this year. Though the Kremlin still owes $252 million in overdue support for U.N. peacekeeping missions -- some of the bills date back to the 1950s -- U.N. officials expect this too will soon be repaid. Says Sir Brian Urquhart, former U.N. Under Secretary-General and now scholar-in-residence at the Ford Foundation: "The U.S. had better watch out, because the Soviets are grasping the initiative."

The notion of the superpowers competing to support the U.N. represents a remarkable turnabout. For many, the nadir of U.N. General Assembly posturing was the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. To some Reaganauts, the organization simply represented a back-door route for advancing Soviet interests and the cause of Third World socialism. One important Administration act was to torpedo the 119-party Law of the Sea treaty. In 1986 the U.S. announced that it would withhold part of its dues until administrative reforms were instituted, notably tighter controls on the $800 million U.N. annual operational budget. In a related move in 1984, Washington had pulled out of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, charging gross mismanagement and anti-Western bias. Britain and Singapore followed suit.

The pressure produced changes. Two years ago, the U.N. Secretariat began a streamlining program whose centerpiece was a 15% reduction of its 13,500 worldwide work force (4,600 in New York City alone). The U.N. also agreed to tighten the rules on hiring temporary employees, who were often used to circumvent ceilings on permanent workers. That ploy was particularly favored by the Soviets; U.S. officials suspected that many of the temps were intelligence agents.

Anti-Western rhetoric also went into decline, as Third World leaders increasingly began to face up to their own political and economic shortcomings. "There is less noise and more practical-mindedness," says Sir Crispin Tickell, Britain's Ambassador to the U.N. Notes a Singapore diplomat in Manhattan: "I think it is fair to say that people are coming to their senses." Not entirely. Over Western objections, the General Assembly last year voted to spend $35 million on convention centers in Ethiopia, where millions face famine, and in Thailand.

The U.N.'s recent successes owe much to an unprecedented new spate of diplomacy among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. In January 1987, U.N. diplomats told TIME, ambassadors representing the five -- Britain, China, France, the U.S. and the Soviet Union -- began a series of regular private conclaves at the behest of the Secretary-General.

At first Perez de Cuellar was looking for new ways to support his efforts to end the Persian Gulf conflict, but the sessions later expanded to include other trouble spots like Afghanistan. The informal meetings offered a regular channel for dealing with thorny issues while avoiding the posturing of public U.N. sessions. The consensus achieved at the sessions has often strengthened Perez de Cuellar's mediation efforts. Says a high U.N. official: "The collaboration of the five has helped the Secretary-General significantly."

To avoid drawing attention to their activities, the five ambassadors meet outside the U.N. at their residences, taking turns as host, with Britain's Tickell as the group's current chairman. "The atmosphere is very sensible, pleasant, totally devoid of ideological stuff," says one participant. Adds another: "It's diplomacy at its best."

The superpower kaffeeklatsches have generated some new respect for the shy but persistent Perez de Cuellar, whose steady, closed-door approach to diplomacy is now bearing fruit. Both sides in the Iran-Iraq conflict say it was only because they trusted Perez de Cuellar that they were ultimately willing to talk. Says an Iraqi diplomat: "He is a man of his word, and he does not take sides."

The U.N.'s hike in international esteem is as fragile as peace itself, but the Soviets in particular seem intent on giving the organization even more importance in the future. Gorbachev last year publicly stressed Soviet intentions to use the U.N. for more active diplomacy. Richard Gardner, a former U.S. State Department official and now a professor of international law at Columbia University, returned last week from a Moscow visit where officials outlined Gorbachev's ideas in detail. Among them: setting up a hotline between the Secretary-General and the capitals of the five permanent Security Council members for speedy consultations; a commitment by the Big Five to submit certain kinds of disputes -- so far unspecified -- to the U.N.-sponsored World Court in the Hague; a conference by 1991 to devise a global strategy for environmental protection.

"For the first time," observes Gardner, "the Soviets are trying to make the U.N. work." With the Reagan Administration now adopting the same position, it may be that the world's pre-eminent peace organization will get a second lease on life.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington and B. William Mader/New York