UNITED NATIONS – A growing concern that recent negative attention toward the United Nations would lead to a renewed period of chilly relations with Washington was one of the reasons Secretary-General Annan decided to delay an Africa trip yesterday, according to U.N. sources.

A new round of congressional investigations into the oil-for-food scandal began yesterday with the revelation that funds skimmed by Saddam Hussein from the U.N.-run program ran up to twice as much as previously reported and reached $21 billion in kickbacks and other illegal revenue.

There was a flurry of press reports over the weekend highlighting allegations by American politicians that the U.N. was uncooperative with Capitol Hill investigations into the scandal, as well as the perception that Mr. Annan and other U.N.-related agencies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, were active in opposing President Bush’s re-election campaign.

Turtle Bay officials yesterday said they feared that this kind of attention would usher a return to congressional withholdings of U.N. funds.

“Sure we are concerned,” one of three officials who spoke to The New York Sun said yesterday. Officials requested anonymity after Mr. Annan’s office decided yesterday that no comment would be directly made on the matter for fear that the more such talk persists, the more it might turn into reality.

In the early 1980s, shortly after President Reagan was swept into office, Congress began withholding funds from the U.N., where America is by far the largest donor, responsible for nearly a quarter of the organization’s annual budget.

Shortly before leaving office, Mr. Reagan said he would favor payment of arrears, but the elder Bush’s administration was unable to secure the funds from a largely U.N.-averse Congress. The U.N. was mired in debt but weathered the storm throughout the Bush and Clinton years. Secretary of State Albright finally reached a pact with Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican of North Carolina.

The 1999 Helms-Biden amendment allowed for back pay of all arrears, though a half-billion dollars is still owed to a separate peacekeeping budget, according to U.N officials. Mr. Annan decided to approve the agreement nevertheless. Yesterday however, he was said to be concerned that the renewal of budget wars might be detrimental to the U.N. budget.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard said that Mr. Annan’s trip to Africa, scheduled to begin yesterday, was delayed 24 hours so that he could attend to “urgent business” in New York. He did not specify but said that one reason was that Mr. Annan wanted to consult his deputy, Louise Frechette, upon her return from a trip to Washington yesterday.

American Ambassador John Danforth told the Sun, “No one on Capitol Hill mentioned to me” the possibility of cutting funds to the U.N. Other American officials tried to tone down such speculations as well. A U.N. official said, however, that “right-wing” politicians in Washington would be happy to return to the pre-Helms-Biden days.