U.N. agrees to lower U.S. contributions to world body

Washington had been paying the top annual assessment of 25 per cent to the U.N. budget of about 1 billion dollars a year, the largest payment among the 189 U.N. members.

The 3 per cent reduction equals about 34 million dollars, a shortfall which other U.N. members would have to pick up.

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, was on Friday reported to be offering to pay the 34 million dollars because many governments are reluctant to increase their contributions to the U.N.

But the organisation is not allowed to take payments from private individuals unless they are channelled through governments that are U.N. members. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the body can accept financial contributions from governments only, but he said "we have no problem" with a check that includes private donations "as long as it comes from the U.S. government".

Eckhard said the U.N. received from the U.S. government a check for 217 million dollars earlier this week towards the budget and other payments, which put the organization in the black for 2000. "Had this money not come in, we would have gone into a negative cash position," he said.

Diplomats involved in the negotiations for the scale of assessment of U.N. members said the 189-member assembly was expected to endorse by consensus later Friday the decision of its budget committee.

That committee had been holding night-long sessions in order to reach a consensus on how much each U.N. member has to pay. The scale is determined according to each country's gross national product, the state of its economy and the size of its population. The committee has also agreed to lower the U.S. payment to peacekeeping operations, which stood at 30 per cent a year. Diplomats said the committee may agree to lower it to 27 per cent, but not 25 per cent as requested by Washington.

Congress had demanded that U.S. payments be lowered across the board, to 22 per cent for the budget and from 30 to 25 per cent for peacekeeping operations. If the demand was met, the U.S. has proposed, Congress would next year release some 600 million dollars in arrears to the U.N.

The U.S. now owes 1.8 billion dollars to the organization, although Congress has said it owes less than that and demanded that the U.N. carries out reforms before the arrears are paid. Besides its contribution to the budget and peacekeeping operations, the United States has donated billions of dollars to humanitarian programmes around the world, as well as to the World Bank and IMF for bailout programmes in poor countries.

Even with lower payments to the U.N., the United States remains the top contributor to the regular U.N. budget. It is followed by Japan with 20.5 per cent, Germany with 9.8 per cent, France with 6.5 per cent, Italy with 5.4 per cent, Britain with 5 per cent, Canada with 2.7 per cent and Spain with 2.5 per cent.

(dpa)