Mighty Micronesia To the Rescue

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The New York Sun

On the board tallying General Assembly votes, the lights next to Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Palau, and, lately, Nauru, sometimes look like the small islets in vast seas that these Pacific Ocean countries are.


The island nations, joined by Israel and America, are derisively referred to as the “mighty Micronesia bloc,” as they vote against the vast majority of U.N. members on subjects such as condemning America’s embargo on Cuba or the two dozen annual resolutions that denounce Israel and hail “alienable rights” of Palestinian Arabs.


“America is not the world’s bad guy,” Palau’s U.N. ambassador, Stuart Beck, told me recently over drinks at Turtle Bay, uttering a truism that somehow escapes U.N. members with much more clout in the building. Even staunch allies such as Britain and the rest of the European nations at times would rather abstain on certain issues than appear next to America on the voting board.


Since America pays nearly a quarter of the United Nations’s budget, the Micronesia bloc is the largest U.N. monetary contributor. But at the General Assembly, where a country such as, say, Sudan, carries as heavy a moral weight as even the most righteous of nations, this bloc is so miniscule that it is dismissed as an oddity. Its votes are negligent compared to voting blocs like the “Group of 77,” which represents poorer nations.


It is this Turtle Bay reality that leads some at the United Nations to believe that Turtle Bay is an arena where a real counterweight could be achieved to the role America plays on the world stage, and where America and countries perceived as its “poodle” allies, like Israel, could be punished.


All this might help to explain how Secretary-General Annan last week found himself being accused of carrying America’s water. So much so that he had to protest, telling reporters, “I’m not the interpreter of Ambassador Bolton.”


Mr. Bolton said earlier that Americans look at Turtle Bay as a “competitor in the marketplace for global problem solving.” If the United Nations lags in that competition, he indicated, the “practical people” of America might look elsewhere for diplomatic solutions. He also proposed that passing next year’s $3.6 billion U.N. budget night be delayed until necessary reform measures take root. This horrified Mr. Annan, who warned of a “serious budget crisis.”


In the aftermath of oil for food, a former aide to President Bush, Christopher Burnham, came in to Turtle Bay as an undersecretary general for management who is eager to “bring the U.N. into the 21st century,” as he puts it. Until now, for example, a U.N. official could receive a gift worth up to $10,000 from anyone. Mr. Burnham wants to lower that bribery-prone ceiling to a reasonable $250.


Like a new sheriff in a crime-ridden outpost, Mr. Burnham is trying to reverse old habits. First, he wants to “ferret out past and existing corruption and to bring the perpetrators to justice,” he told me recently. And then, he added, he wants to “bring in a kind of management controls and oversight that will reasonably guarantee that corruption of this type cannot take root in the U.N. again.”


The United Nations needs to become a body that is answerable to the “global taxpayer,” Mr. Burnham said. In fact, he added, institutions like the U.N. should be even more accountable than the corporate world he comes from because “as an investor, I could choose where to put my money, but as a taxpayer, I have no choice.”


But a letter sent recently by the Group of 77 to Mr. Annan showed deep resentment toward most proposals for management change. The letter reflected a widely held Turtle Bay opinion that Mr. Annan is beholden to America, and that the internal reform he supports is a scheme to get America to control the United Nations. It also reflected a loss of faith in Mr. Annan by his staunchest allies.


The General Assembly has “essentially not made progress” on reform, as Mr. Bolton put it. In a body where pushing for accountability is looked at as an evil scheme by a giant intending to take over the world, it is hard to make progress.


The United Nations would be better off if the sensible Micronesia bloc really became mightier. Until then, the only way to force any Turtle Bay change is for its strongest member, America, to use its purse strings in an attempt to lay down the law.


The New York Sun

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