End in sight for UN dispute

The General Assembly must approve any deal by Friday

By diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason

An agreement on reducing the American contribution to the United Nations budget could be finalised later on Friday, ending years of wrangling.

The argument has embittered relations between the UN and the US, which gave itself a unilateral cut and refused to pay arrears amounting to $1.5bn.

US reluctant to engage in peacekeeping

The dispute over money is partly a genuine grievance and partly a symptom of a deep American suspicion of the UN.

The US does not want its soldiers to serve under UN command and has sometimes been reluctant to authorise peacekeeping operations even when it was not taking part directly.

Some Republicans in Congress would like to have nothing to do with the UN at all, while at the extreme end of American opinion are those right-wingers who believe against all the evidence that the UN is taking over their government.

But since Kofi Annan became Secretary-General, official relations have improved.

President Clinton has long wanted to settle the American arrears, but signed a congressional bill reducing payments to the UN in order to increase pressure for an international agreement on a new assessment of contributions.

Bush administration

The American ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, has made it a priority to get a deal before Friday's deadline for approval by the General Assembly.

Relations with Washington have improved under Annan

And it seems the incoming Bush administration would also like to get the problem out of the way before it takes office in January.

The exercise is extremely complicated, because the proposed change in the system of assessment inevitably means that some countries will pay more if the US pays less.

But it will reflect more accurately the reality of relative economic power.

Mr Holbrooke said newly emerging countries like Singapore, some of the oil producers and others with strong economies could afford to pay more.