When Secretary-General Annan came up with an ambitious program of necessary reforms for the United Nations back in March, the mere suggestion that he planned to take action – and that without him no change would be possible – was good enough for his defenders. The prospect of reform was a rallying cry against the secretary-general’s detractors. The General Assembly began deliberating the reform plan in earnest on Friday, bringing to the fore some of the problems with building consensus among 191 countries.

Meanwhile, Chief of Staff Mark Malloch Brown is concerned about U.N. reforms coming from outside the organization: The chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois, is expected to lead a legislative initiative starting Wednesday that would put more immediate pressure on the world body than Mr. Annan’s internal reform scheme.

Mr. Hyde’s calls for change at Turtle Bay focus on increasing accountability and reducing anti-Americanism. Every year, Washington would assess whether those changes were implemented. If not, 50% of American funding to the United Nations would be cut.

“Hyde has been very good to me,” Mr. Malloch Brown, an American-minded Briton who has become Mr. Annan’s representative in Washington, said late last week. “He’s a gentleman. He gave me two and a half hours, and his whole committee listened.” That said, he told me, “I am worried about Hyde.” So worried, in fact, that he hopes the Bush administration and, even more surprisingly, U.N. ambassador-nominee John Bolton will help him fend off Mr. Hyde.

Expressing publicly that Mr. Bolton could save the United Nations from Mr. Hyde was not merely Mr. Malloch Brown’s attempt at “kissing-up-kicking-down.” Congress can use the fact that it pays nearly a quarter of the U.N. annual budget to enforce changes, as it has in the past. The State Department publicly opposes using dues as a weapon, even as some in the administration might quietly approve.

“So what?” an aide to Mr. Hyde said to me last week. The State Department might oppose the legislation, but there is wide congressional support and the bill has a good chance of passing, he said.

Meanwhile, other notions of U.N. reform are circulating in the capital. Former congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and George Mitchell will soon introduce a comprehensive package, and so might Senator Coleman, a Republican of Minnesota. In a legislative initiative introduced last week, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Florida, and Tom Lantos, a Democrat of California, addressed Turtle Bay’s anti-Semitism.

And then there is Mr. Annan’s plan, which the General Assembly will continue to discuss until September, when Mr. Annan hopes that at least some of his ideas will somehow have gained acceptance from a majority of the United Nations’ 191 members. Few diplomats are willing to lay any sensible odds on that bet, however. Most members balk at ending the absurdity of permitting Cuba, Sudan, and Libya to help set the world’s human-rights agenda. They oppose any terrorism definition that includes suicide bombings in Tel Aviv. Reshaping the Security Council proves an almost impossible task.

Mr. Annan’s noble blueprint does not yet seem realistic and, unlike Mr. Hyde’s plan, has no teeth.

Mr. Malloch Brown recently said that the “ungainly giant” America “must abide by others’ rules as well as its own.” He hopes that, instead of making threats, Washington will consolidate its various reform ideas and introduce them as its contribution to the General Assembly debate.

“Withholding dues is a terribly counterproductive tactic because the rest of the reformers don’t believe in it,” he said (as if Mr. Hyde should heed the objections of “reformers” such as, say, Syria). The congressional threat, he added, would be held “against criteria which will be very difficult to meet” (as if Mr. Annan’s criteria are not).

If, as expected, most of Mr. Annan’s ideas fail after endless deliberations, the United Nations will lose little, aside from further erosion of the secretary-general’s personal prestige. Mr. Hyde’s plan, on the other hand, involves hanging a very real sword of Damocles over the organization’s head. The latter has many enemies, but it is sure to help Turtle Bay concentrate on the trouble at hand.