By Nicole Winfield
Associated PressNovember 27, 2000
Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to U.N. members on Monday to support emergency funding to revamp the U.N. peacekeeping department, saying a delay would only further hamper the organization's ability to keep the peace. In a speech to the U.N. budget committee, Annan also sought to allay fears from the developing world that a new focus on beefing up U.N. peacekeeping would come at the expense of funding U.N. development programs around the world.
Annan has asked the 189-member General Assembly to approve an emergency $22 million for the next year to begin revamping the U.N. peacekeeping department with the addition of some 250 new staff and the creation of a new unit to analyze intelligence and other information. The reform proposals were contained in a groundbreaking report Annan commissioned in the aftermath of two highly critical assessments of U.N. peacekeeping failures in Rwanda and the Bosnian U.N. "safe haven" of Srebrenica.
While the report was widely endorsed by world leaders at the U.N. Millennium Summit in September, ambassadors from the developing world have since raised questions about some of its key recommendations. Some, for example, have said calls for the United Nations to improve its intelligence-gathering mechanism for their peacekeeping operations could adversely affect poorer countries and amount to U.N. meddling.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan understood that some U.N. members misunderstood the intent of some of the report's recommendations. He said the United Nations has been trying to clarify them, with mixed success.
U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who has spearheaded calls to improve U.N. peacekeeping to confront conflicts in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and East Timor, backed Annan's recommendations, but acknowledged much of the U.N. peacekeeping problems are due to U.S. arrears.
The United States owes the organization $1.8 billion in back dues. Congress has agreed to pay back about half of that, but only if the General Assembly agrees to a host of U.S. conditions, such as lowering America's annual assessment for the U.N. administrative and peacekeeping budget.
To read the Secretary General's statement, click here.
