House bill threatens to halt support for U.N.

WASHINGTON – The House voted Friday to issue an ultimatum to the United Nations: reform or lose U.S. financial support.

Lawmakers also made clear to the White House that its more diplomatic approach wouldn’t do.

Led by Republicans, the House voted 221-184 for a bill that would withhold one half of assessed U.S. dues, currently around $440 million a year, if the U.N. doesn’t accomplish nearly four dozen steps to improve its accountability and root out corruption.

Failure to comply would also result in U.S. refusal to support expanded and new peacekeeping missions.

“History shows that when Congress stands tough, when it says that if you don’t reform we are not going to pay, then change occurs,” said House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., author of the legislation.

The Bush administration, while applauding the House for pressing for changes at the U.N., said the automatic withholding of payments could “detract from and undermine our efforts” to work with U.N. members to improve the organization.

The House rejected, on a 216-190 vote, an alternative offered by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., that would have made similar demands for change but left it to the secretary of state to decide whether to withhold up to 50 percent of payments.

The Senate has no immediate plans to take up the bill. Its chances of becoming law are uncertain. But it was clear the frustrations of House Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly for the Hyde bill, outweighed the urgings of the administration to reconsider the legislation.

“Far from promoting justice and respect for international law, the United Nations has become one of the world’s greatest apologists for tyranny and terror,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. “The U.N.’s corruption is so breathtaking in its scope as to be almost universal.”

Over two days of debate, speakers slammed the U.N. for what they called its wasteful bureaucracy; its anti-America, anti-Israel biases; its seating of tyrannical governments on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights; and scandals involving the sexual misconduct of peacekeepers and alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program for Iraq.