S. Hrg. 106-777 - THE FUTURE OF U.S.–U.N. RELATIONS A Dialogue Between the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign...

130 years, 1870. The Chairman. I believe Strom Thurmond was here at the last one. [Laughter.] The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, sir. This field hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee will come to order today, as I say, and our purpose today is to examine prospects for improving the United Nations' financial position. Now, never before, as indicated, has this committee, the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate, visited as a group an international institution, and I hope the Senators will consider it enlightening, and that the United Nations will regard this visit as a sign of our desire for a new beginning in the U.S.-U.N. relationship. And, while on that point, our first witness is going to be the distinguished Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Richard Holbrooke; and I want to commend him and all the members of his staff who have worked so diligently, and many long hours, and they do not pay overtime, to make this a good meeting. We have two panels to explore the U.N.'s reform efforts and American interest at the United Nations. First, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mr. Holbrooke, will testify and respond to inquiries, aided by his assistant for management and reform, Ambassador Donald Hays, who has been squiring me around for the last 48 hours. On the second panel we will have John Bolton, a long-time friend of ours, Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs; and Edward Luck, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of International Organizations, affiliated with the New York University Law School and Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. They will discuss the U.N.'s proper role and peacekeeping activities, and later, after the formal hearing, and we recess, we will hear from the Under Secretary General for Management, Joseph Connor, and the Special Advisor to the Secretary General, John Ruggie. Now, before Ambassador Holbrooke begins, I turn to my good friend, cohort, and the distinguished Ranking Member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden of Delaware.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Helms follows:] Prepared Statement of Chairman Helms I want to thank the President of the Association of the Bar, Michael Cooper, for providing this stately room for a hearing. This Field Hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee will come to order and our purpose today is to examine prospects for improving the United Nations financial position. The American taxpayers feel that the U.N. lives and breathes on the hard-earned money of working Americans. They resent comments made here in New York suggesting that the United States is a "deadbeat." They are aware that the majority of the U.N. members routinely vote against the U.S. position in the General Assembly. They read and hear in the news that, despite all the human rights abuses taking place in dictatorships across the globe, a U.N. "Special Rapporteur" sometime back decided that the most important task on his agenda was to investigate human rights violations in the U.S. He did an investigation of sorts and confirmed a feeling that he had to begin with -- that the U.S. Human rights record was found wanting. The American people have heard all of this and they have grown increasingly irritated. As for the "deadbeat" charge, I asked the General Accounting Office to assess just how much the American taxpayers contributed to the United Nations in 1999 (last year). The GAO reported to me that in 1999, the American people contributed a total of more than $1.4 billion dollars to the U.N. system in assessments and voluntary contributions. The American taxpayers spent an additional eight billion, seven hundred and seventy nine million dollars from the U.S. military budget to support various U.N. resolutions and peacekeeping operations around the world. So, last year (1999) alone, the American people furnished Ten Billion, One Hundred and Seventy Nine Million Dollars to support the work of the United Nations. No other nation on earth comes anywhere close to matching that amount paid to the U.N. When the distinguished Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was first elected, several of us on this Committee decided to try to establish a working relationship, the result being the Helms-Biden law, which the President finally got around to signing into law this past November. The product of three years of negotiations and hard-fought compromises, it was approved by the U.S. Senate by a 98-1 margin. Congress has written a check to the United Nations for $926 million, payable upon the implementation of previously agreed-upon common-sense reforms. So, we will address three subjects at this hearing. First, we will hear how reforms required by the Helms-Biden law are being implemented, including most notably, a sweeping readjustment of the scale of member nations financial contributions, in the spirit of burden-sharing. Second, we will look at how reform can be carried forward in the regular course of business at the U.N. reforms need to be sustained by constant monitoring and the measurement of success throughout the U.N. system. Redundancy in that system must be reined in; for instance, in Guatemala, there are 18 different U.N. programs in operation. Third, with reforms launched and arrears paid, we can then turn to the subject of promoting U.S. interests on policy matters at the U.N. Never before has the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a group, visited an international institution. I hope Senators will consider it enlightening, and that the U.N. will regard this visit as a sign of our desire for a new beginning in the U.S.-U.N. relationship. We have scheduled two panels to explore U.N. reform efforts and American interests at the U.N. First, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., Richard Holbrooke, will testify and respond to queries aided by his assistant for management and reform, Ambassador Donald Hays. On the second panel, we will hear from John Bolton, Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs -- and from Edward Luck, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of International Organization, affiliated with the New York University Law School and Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. They will discuss the U.N.'s proper role and peacekeeping activities with them. Later, after the formal hearing recesses, we will hear from the Under-Secretary General for Management, Joseph Connor, and the Special Advisor to the Secretary General, John Ruggie. Before Ambassador Holbrooke testifies, I turn to the distinguished ranking member, Senator Biden. Senator Biden. Well, Mr. Chairman, I thank you. I thought the president was going to move your admission to the New York Bar. Having attended law school in the State of New York, I always thought I would be spending more time here than in my home State, and it turned out, fortunately for the bar, I went home, but it is an honor to be here. Let me just say that as a lawyer and member of the bar I consider this one of the most distinguished and honored organizations in the country, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here. But Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you. You and I have worked long and hard, with your leadership, to breach an impasse that began to, I think, impact on the security interests of the United States of America, and that is the impasse reached over whether we could reach an accommodation on funding requirements of the United States to the U.N. The fact that I was pushing that idea for a long time came as no surprise, and was not, quite frankly, of much relevance. The fact that you decided that this was an important undertaking was incredibly relevant, because you have and do represent and are the most respected and outspoken voice in the Senate on matters that reflect a more conservative point of view. The United Nations has never been the darling of certain sectors of our political environment, and your leadership has been significant. It is a term that is overused, but I do think that it is a start, not merely because it is the first time in 130-plus years there has been a committee to ever hold a hearing here, but I think -- I have been in the U.S. Senate -- you and I came the same day, on the same year, were sworn in at the same time, 1972. I imagine we have had field hearings somewhere else, but if we have I do not know where, and I do not remember having any in this city, and your discussion and frank appraisal of your point of view with the U.N. Security Council yesterday, I think quite frankly benefited everyone. You and I, as we both know, as close friends, we may disagree on how much of a threat to our sovereignty the United Nations is -- I think it is not a threat at all. I understand your point of view. We disagreed on a number of things. I did not think we should have as many conditions, and you did not think we should have as much money, but we worked it out. We worked it out, and hopefully this is the beginning of a new chapter in U.S.-U.N. relations. But I just want to say for the record it is because of your willingness to take the steps you have taken, and they have been significant, and I will end where I began. When I saw you this morning for the first time since Christmas, and I said, this was vintage Jesse Helms. By that, I mean that you did not trim your sails at all in terms of what your ideological point of view was, but what you did was, you commanded the stage and you changed the dialog and you changed the form, and that is what I meant by vintage Jesse Helms, and for that I thank you. I can think of no two people who are more independent and move to the sound of their own drummers more than you and the Ambassador before us, who I consider a very close personal friend. The idea that -- I think you are becoming the -- I used to say that Strom Thurmond and I were the ultimate odd couple in the Senate, because we like each other so much. Well, I think they are going to start talking about Holbrooke and Helms, or Helms and Holbrooke as the ultimate odd couple, but I am glad you are both in the positions you are in, and I want to again thank you and thank the bar for your hospitality today. The Chairman. Well said, Joe. Now, Mr. Ambassador, it is up to you, and thank you for all you have done. STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE, UNITED STATES PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UNITED NATIONS, ACCOMPANIED BY HON. DONALD HAYS, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UNITED NATIONS FOR UNITED NATIONS MANAGEMENT AND REFORM, NEW YORK, N.Y.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Biden, Senator Warner, Senator Hagel, Senator Grams, Senator Feingold. I want to welcome you to my home town. I look forward to visiting yours next month, Mr. Chairman, and then after that we can compare who has the better restaurants and nicer hotels, but I am glad that you are back in the city. I hope I am not revealing -- Senator Biden. You did not say compare hospitality. You may lose on that one. Ambassador Holbrooke [continuing]. I will lose that, but I hope I am not betraying a confidence when I say, welcome back to the city you spent your honeymoon in, with your wife and your daughters. [Laughter.] I think the audience misunderstood me. I understand that you spent your honeymoon with your wife, but she is back here with you today, and that is what I meant. [Laughter.] The Chairman. I am glad about both times, to tell you the truth.

So I also want to especially pay tribute to the fact that not just one but the two most important committee chairman dealing with our national security are here today, and my special appreciation, as always, to Senator Warner, who presented me to your committee for confirmation, and whose friendship and advice I treasure profoundly. I am accompanied today by, as you so kindly put it, most of our team, but particularly, sitting right behind me, Ambassador Don Hays, one of the really strongest experts in management in the State Department who your and Senator Grams' speedy confirmation has permitted us to make great inroads on the management issue. I would also like to note that Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Larkin is here with us from Washington, who you all know so well, and behind me are a very considerable number of Ambassadors from the U.N. who, apparently having enjoyed the remarkable lunch we just had, decided to come downtown to keep going. I have a prepared statement, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Mr. Ambassador, let us have the visiting Ambassadors stand, if they will. Will the General Assembly of the United Nations be in order. [Laughter.] [Applause.] Ambassador Holbrooke. So I see all continents are represented back there, and I am just delighted. Mr. Chairman, I have a prepared statement which I would like to submit for the record and then just make a few general remarks, if I might. The Chairman. Very well. Ambassador Holbrooke. You just used the phrase, a new beginning, Senator Biden just used the phrase, a new chapter, and here we are in the first month of a new century. Yesterday, in this remarkable and unprecedented meeting with the Security Council, at least four or five Ambassadors publicly used the word historic, so if they did, let me at least quote them and say that I think that we did something remarkable here and, like Senator Biden, I want to thank you for leading the committee here. For the benefit of the audience, I should also say that a very large number of Senators on this committee who could not be here called and asked to be remembered. They all understood the importance of this event. And I would like to put into the record my own feelings about the last 2 days. First of all, a special tribute to Irwin Belk from North Carolina, a public member of the U.S. delegation of the General Assembly, who is from North Carolina, and who has played an indispensable role in making this happen, and will be our host tonight at another unprecedented event, a reception in honor of the committee and the Security Council, a joint reception dinner. Second, simply to try to clarify what I think is happening here -- and I say I think, Mr. Chairman, because it is a work in progress -- if you look back over the history of the United Nations since the end of the cold war, we can already see three distinct phases. In the first phase, from the fall of the Berlin Wall through the next 3 or 4 years, I think there was an overextension of U.N. peacekeeping without its mandates being clearly defined. It got overextended. It ran into horrendous problems in three places very quickly, sequentially, Somalia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994, and Bosnia in 1992 to 1995. That catastrophe, which cost countless lives, millions of lives lost on two continents, a tremendous amount of money, also led to the inevitable departure of the incumbent Secretary General of the U.N. at the time, a withdrawal from peacekeeping by the United Nations, a withdrawal of the United States from involvement with the United Nations, which your committee reflected, and which was symbolized to me by a very personal incident. When the Dayton peace talks began in November 1995, the U.N. called us up and asked if they could have a representative present, and it took me just about 1 nanosecond to tell them they were not welcome at Dayton. We did not want the U.N. at Dayton, they did not deserve to be there, they would have mucked it up, and we went on and did the Dayton peace agreements without the U.N.; it was a pretty low point. That was phase 1, and phase 2. Phase 1, an involvement which was not thought out, phase 2, a withdrawal. We are now clearly in a third phase, a phase in which, under your leadership, the United States has made available to the U.N. $926 million toward the arrears, while continuing to make tremendous contributions in other areas. We were always, even at the height of the arrears crisis, which is now well behind us, we were always the largest contributor to the U.N. We were never a dead-beat. I noticed you mentioned that yesterday. I want to assure you that no member of the State Department ever used that phrase. Many of your colleagues brought it up with me last fall. It may have been used by some private citizen, or some outside observer, but we were never dead-beats. We were the largest contributor even when we were in arrears. But you and Senator Biden and your colleagues solved that, and put on it some benchmarks which are controversial, but let us look at the record. We have already fulfilled three of them, three big ones. Some of the others are quite -- we had already fulfilled. Secretary Albright and I have worked very hard to work with the Congress on this issue. She has worked in capitals and I have worked in New York on these issues. Senator Grams and his staff have been in constant touch with Ambassador Hays and myself on every detail, and as a result of this I think the United States position at the U.N. was already improving prior to your arrival in New York yesterday. Now, it is too early to tell the full impact of your trip to New York. This is a work in progress, and I told Nightline last night it was half-time. Now it is sort of the third quarter, but I think it is clear, by the reaction of the U.N. and the extraordinary fact that so many of my cherished colleagues have come here to see you again, this is a -- I looked back here and I saw instantly -- I do not want to insult anybody. I saw Australia, Mexico, other major countries are represented here by their Ambassadors, and many missions are represented by people just below the Ambassador level. It is clear that the message has gotten through, and the message is clear. You have made it clear you are not anti-U.N. You have a view of the United Nations, and you want the U.N. to succeed on your terms, and just as your committee has a range of views, it is now, I think, going to be much better understood by the Ambassadors. And I want to say to the people who were not at lunch that they should have seen Ambassador after Ambassador lining up to meet every one of the Senators and unanimously saying, I may not agree with everything you said, but your trip here is a break-through and we appreciate it, and we now understand more clearly what the Helms-Biden bill is all about. This lays a much better basis, Mr. Chairman, for the actual work of promoting American foreign policy through the U.N. Now, I would sum up the U.N. in three words, from an American point of view. Flawed, but indispensable. It is hard to imagine, as Senator Biden said earlier to day, it is hard to imagine the world today being better off if the U.N. did not exist, and yet it is simultaneously impossible to dispute the fact that the United Nations, for a lot of bureaucratic reasons, political reasons, leadership reasons in the past, prior to Secretary General Kofi Annan taking over, can be vastly improved, and that is what we are doing, and that is what your presence here today will advance. I know you have a vast agenda of specific issues you want to cover, substantive policy issues which I will withhold for the questions and answers, but I do want to say that if you talk about a new beginning, if Senator Biden talks about a new chapter, if dozens of Permanent Representatives talk about historic, I speak for both Secretary Albright and myself, we are proud to be part of the process. One last thing, Mr. Chairman. I have heard rumors this is an election year, and I think that we should all note that it is even more remarkable and important that we are meeting in the first month of a year in which we will choose a new President and a majority of the Members of Congress. I hope the world understands the message here, that politics goes on, but we are knitting together the core of a bipartisan foreign policy within which there are significant disagreements, significant. You and Senator Biden have aired them publicly many times. But the world should see what is going on here, and your coming to New York and then inviting the Security Council to come to Washington is a most remarkable statement, and I thank you for it on behalf of the President, with whom I talked the day before yesterday, President Clinton was extremely pleased at this hearing, and asked to be remembered to the committee -- and on behalf of Secretary Albright, with whom Barbara Larkin talked just a few moments ago. So I thank you very much for doing this for us, and I am ready to respond to any questions that you and your committee and Senator Warner may have.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Holbrooke follows:] Prepared Statement of Ambassador Holbrooke Mr. Chairman, Senators: thank you for this opportunity to appear before your committee today. I would like to welcome all of you to New York. I am deeply honored to be the lead witness in this unprecedented "field hearing" of your committee, and look forward to discussing with all of you how, together, we can move forward to advance U.S. interests at the United Nations, and make the U.N. a more effective institution. As I stated during my confirmation hearings last June, and expressed again the last time I had the privilege to appear before you in November, I believe that close consultations with the Congress are essential. U.S. national interests are best served when the Executive Branch and Congress work in a bipartisan spirit. I particularly appreciate the close relationship that has developed between members of this committee and myself and my team here in New York. Your trip here is only a beginning for an enhanced partnership between the committee and the U.S. mission to the U.N., as well as for the U.S.-UN relationship overall. Since the passage of the Helms-Biden legislation three months ago, the United States' relationship with the United Nations has undergone a dramatic, critical transformation. Mr. Chairman, yesterday's Security Council meeting, and today's special "field hearing," opens a new beginning for the U.S.- U.N. relations. As we heard from many of my fellow Permanent Representatives yesterday, for the U.N. to succeed, American leadership is essential. To my mind, there is no better example of the imperative for American leadership in the U.N. than this month's focus on Africa. Already, we've placed a new security focus on the scourge of AIDS and its effects on fomenting instability, addressed the plight of refugees and IDPs, pressed for peace in Angola and heard from former President Mandela on his vision for reconciliation in Burundi. And this weekend, seven presidents from states involved in the Congo conflict will come to New York for Monday's Security Council meeting on the next steps for peace there. Secretary Albright will preside over Monday's meeting, and negotiations will continue throughout the week. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to echo something you said yesterday during your historic speech in the Security Council: All of us -- the Clinton Administration, the Congress, and most important, the American people -- want the United Nations to succeed. Your committee's presence here in New York symbolizes our agreement on one essential point: that the U.N., despite its significant flaws, remains a vital tool for advancing U.S. national security interests. As they might say downtown from here, on Wall Street, the U.N. is "net-net" for the United States. If the U.N. did not exist, we would have to invent it. This fact is clear today around the globe. During the past five months, I have been to every major arena of current U.N. activity -- Bosnia and Kosovo, East Timor, and Africa. I have seen first-hand the critical role the U.N. plays in each of these places: helping rebuild Bosnia and Kosovo and assisting their people in regaining a sense of normalcy and dignity; maintaining stability and supporting the rehabilitation process in East Timor; and sheltering refugees and feeding the hungry in desperate places like Angola. These are vital tasks that no single nation could -- nor should -- do on its own. The U.N. also remains essential to addressing problems that threaten the interests of every U.N. member -- problems like environmental degradation, terrorism, arms proliferation, and the scourge of diseases like AIDS. And finally, the U.N. plays a critical political role in advancing freedom and democracy. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only a handful of countries with governments elected by the people (and there were none elected on the basis of universal suffrage). Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, there are over 100 countries with democratically elected governments. The U.N. has played a vital part in making this true. Mr. Chairman, as you reminded us yesterday, these ideals -- freedom of speech and faith; rule of law, not force; and government of the people, by the people, and for the people -- are not just U.N. ideals, these are inalienable, fundamental American ideals and having the U.N. work toward them is in America's interest. That being said, we cannot, we will not, turn a blind-eye to the U.N.'s significant problems and inefficiencies Those U.N. supporters who regard criticism of the U.N. as criticism of the idea of the U.N. are profoundly mistaken. Those of us who care about the U.N. and believe in its great potential -- those of us like you, Mr. Chairman, President Clinton, Secretary Albright and myself, along with most members of Congress, and every member of this committee -- have an obligation to be honest and acknowledge that in many ways, the U.N. system is flawed. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to this organization. Since I first appeared before you during my confirmation hearings, I have been clear that U.N. reform would be my highest sustained priority. I intend to keep it that way. Mr Chairman, this meeting speaks volumes about our shared commitment to address these flaws and help the U.N. work better. Only two months ago, we made an important step in this direction: the Congress passed the landmark Helms-Biden legislation. With this accomplishment, we have started moving forward to tackle the tough reform issues. As Secretary General Annan himself has noted, and as several members of the Security Council repeated yesterday, U.N. reform is a "process" not an event -- and there is no doubt that the reform process will be arduous. That is why we are so grateful for this committee's support and that of your colleagues in the Congress. Coming to New York, joining us here at the United Nations and having the opportunity to meet with representatives of our fellow member nations, helps provide a sense of the immense challenge we all face. It is imperative that we build a broad coalition of members in support of a positive reform agenda. For our part, I am fortunate to have as part of my team the indefatigable Ambassador Don Hays, who has already met with over 80 of our fellow Permanent Representatives to discuss our reform objectives. Mr. Chairman, our reform agenda at the U.N. is designed, as you put it in your speech yesterday, to strengthen the U.N.'s ability to serve the purpose for which it was created. This agenda includes meaningful structural reforms such as those outlined in the Helms-Biden legislation, including progress in results based budgeting, better program evaluation and sunset provisions. We also insist that the U.N. adheres to budget discipline -- and this year, following some difficult negotiations, we succeeded in getting the U.N. to maintain a stable budget. Last fall, the United States finally returned to its rightful place on the U.N.'s expert committee on the budget, the ACABQ. We're also insisting that the scale of assessments process is made more equitable, and have launched a comprehensive strategy to overhaul the scale to reflect 21st century realities. Mr. Chairman, let me be clear: when we insist that the U.N. create a better management system; when we insist for sunset clauses for committees that are now irrelevant (like the Committee on Decolonization); when we insist for reform of the personnel system and for more transparency; when we insist that the U.N. get its act together on peacekeeping, we do so to strengthen the U.N. -- not weaken it. At times, we have honest disagreements with the U.N. But that does not diminish our fundamental commitment to the U.N. and what it stands for -- common solutions to common problems. Fifteen years ago, President Reagan expressed a sentiment that I believe remains true today: "We believe in the United Nations and what it symbolizes," he said. "We have never stopped believing in its possibilities, and we've never stopped taking the United Nations seriously." But taking the U.N. seriously means helping it become more effective -- a more organized, more streamlined, more efficient organization, one that is better equipped to deal with the unique and daunting challenges of the 21st century. It is toward these ends that I look forward to working with you in the coming year. Again, thank you for affording me this opportunity to be with you here today. The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. I suggest we have maybe 6 minutes. My first question is, to reach a budget of $2.536 billion, the General Assembly cut expenditures in general temporary assistance, consultants, and travel. At the same time, the account for peacekeeping increased and the number of temporary positions charged to extrabudgetary funds increased, and that leads me to ask the question, how much of the regular budget was simply transferred to the other accounts?

Mr. Chairman, the extrabudgetary positions are temporary, as I understand it. I am not familiar with every detail of this issue at this moment. I can submit an answer in writing, if you wish. The Chairman. Sure. It is a little unfair to ask a question like that, but I do want it for the record of this committee meeting. The United Nations has undertaken several new ambitious peacekeeping missions, plans to expand several others, and is considering several new ones. Now, in my mind, if the U.S. temporarily details military personnel, that is, so-called gratis personnel, to the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping, it will make peacekeeping operations more effective and help prevent the hiring of more permanent United Nations, shall we say, bureaucrats. Now, what impact has the elimination of gratis personnel since 1997 had on the U.N.'s capacity to carry out its peacekeeping responsibilities? Ambassador Holbrooke. Well, I appreciate this question both at its general and its specific level, because of all the many important things that we deal with in our foreign policy, directly or indirectly through the United Nations, I would say that this is probably the most urgent issue, is peacekeeping, although I would like permission to footnote the fact that we are paying a great deal of attention this month to another issue, AIDS in Africa, the spread of AIDS in Africa, which Senator Feingold and I focused on during our trip last month. But on this issue you raised on peacekeeping, as I indicated in my opening remarks, we are entering a new phase of the U.N.'s history in regard to peacekeeping in East Timor, in Kosovo, and in Sierra Leone, and perhaps elsewhere, and the U.N. will not get a third chance. I mentioned the first two earlier, the involvement which collapsed, the pull-back, now the U.N. has a second chance in your committee, and the Armed Services Committee has been very supportive in general and very constructive in its criticisms, and I would note here that Senator Warner and you already had a very important private colloquy on Kosovo with the Secretary General and his people earlier on peacekeeping today. Now, the U.N. will not get a third chance. If it blows it this time, I cannot imagine that it is going to be given a third chance, either by the American public or the world community, and therefore we have got to get peacekeeping right. The gratis personnel is an important part of that process. I personally believe it was highly successful, and I believe that the Secretary General's authority should be used to use gratis personnel under the framework that was set out a couple of years ago. This is one of the many issues on which I think your trip will help. I think it will correct some misunderstandings, and I think it is quite consistent with the larger picture that we are here to develop today. The Chairman. A good answer to a question that is of vital importance. Last month, the Security Council adopted a plan to create a new arms inspection program in Iraq one year after UNSCOM was shut down by Saddam Hussein. Now, the Secretary General is having trouble getting the Security Council to agree to a chief inspector. Two questions. Are you making undermining and replacing Saddam Hussein a priority of the U.S. diplomacy at the United Nations, and number 2, because they are related, are you determined to fight off the increasingly popular notion in the United Nations of loosening the sanctions on Saddam Hussein? Ambassador Holbrooke. My personal priorities would put the removal of two people at the top of my list. You mentioned one. The other one's name is Milosevic. I do not see how we can have stability in either Europe or the Middle East as long as those two men are in power. My actual duties do not involve the efforts for a regime change in Iraq, but I follow this issue closely. I met with the Iraq opposition when they came to New York. You and I had a private discussion on that, and I think we are in agreement. On the question of the head of the sanctions regime, the Secretary General was obligated under the U.N. Security Council resolution to name somebody by last weekend, 5 days ago. He told me, and I think he said to you it was the toughest personnel decision he has ever confronted, and he made a recommendation on schedule of Rolph Ekeus, who you all know is a very distinguished Swedish diplomat who headed UNSCOM and is currently the Swedish Ambassador in Washington. Mr. Ekeus himself was not anxious to take the job. He deserves to have an easier job than this, but he was willing to respond to the call of the world. Under the resolution, the Security Council needs to approve this. Two-and-a-half members of the Security Council objected. The half was not the key problem. The Russians objected and, I regret to say, the French objected. As you well know, the month of January, the United States has the rotating presidency of the Security Council, so I am currently the president of the Security Council, and in that capacity I have an absolute legal obligation under the charter to help solve this problem, which slightly limits my ability to address it openly while trying to solve it privately. But let me say this, Mr. Chairman. We have spent a great deal of time on this. I read in the papers that I have not been spending a lot of time on this because I am spending all my time on Africa. Well, the fact is, this is the month of Africa for the Security Council, we are emphasizing it, we did have President Mandela here earlier in the week, we have got seven African presidents arriving tomorrow. This question of Iraq has been on our agenda every hour of every day for the last month, and the situation as of this moment, to the extent I feel it would be useful to talk about it now, is very simple. The Secretary General made an excellent recommendation after an immense amount of work. The United States supports the Secretary General and commends him for his efforts. The Security Council is still considering Mr. Ekeus, but there is no full agreement, which is required under the rules of the Security Council, not entirely dissimilar, in some ways, to a confirmation process in the Senate, with which we are both familiar, except that it involves the Russians and other countries, and I feel it is very wrong to have blocked Mr. Ekeus, since he did a good job last time, and we have not stood down our support of that recommendation. It has not been withdrawn, and we are continuing to pursue it, and meanwhile other names are being thrown in the hopper and being discussed, but Rolf Ekeus is still the candidate of the Secretary General, and now speaking very formally as the president of the Security Council I will say we are still seized with the problem and we have been meeting in private sessions around the clock, and my deputy, Ambassador Cunningham, is not here right now I think because he is working on that very issue, in direct consultation with the Secretary and Tom Pickering as we speak. The Chairman. Very good. Senator Biden.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ambassador, the Helms-Biden legislation provides a total of $926 million in back payments, but the U.N. claims the United States owes $1.6 billion in arrears. For the record, can you explain the difference, why the U.N. believes we owe $1.6 billion? Ambassador Holbrooke. Senator Biden, I will let the U.N. explain why they think we owe what they say we owe. That is up to them. I will only say that the area in disagreement, so- called contested arrears, is made up over a dozen different -- about $500 million is made up of over a dozen different legislative and policy withholdings that accrued over the years. Some result from a dispute over the taxation of U.S. citizens. Others grew out of our legislation that capped the U.S. contribution to peacekeeping. We will support the legislative process and above all the Helms-Biden package, and the U.N. may continue to say we owe them the money. Our position is clear, as laid out in your legislation.

And there is no space between the administration's position on that and the Senate's position, is that correct?

None whatsoever. Under oath before your committee I said my highest sustained priority would be implementation of the Helms-Biden package, and that is our highest priority, and Senator Grams and Ambassador Hays and I have had extensive discussions on this precise issue. Senator Biden. One of the areas of confusion at the end of this last, the first year of this Congress, which we recessed prior to Thanksgiving, was whether or not the passage of Helms- Biden solved the issue of losing our vote in the General Assembly, and that is that failure to pay our dues, our current dues, which come to about -- for 1999 come to about $300 million, whether or not the passage of Helms-Biden solved that problem, and my understanding is that we have essentially put down $50 million toward that. In addition, there is about $250 million, in what we call in the Senate the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill, which has become part of this big omnibus bill that we are about to deal with when we get back. But is our understanding correct that once that $250 million is freed up, which is separate and apart from the Helms-Biden piece, that the whole issue of our "losing our vote in the General Assembly" is moot, is over?

It is a little bit too early for my colleagues to work out exactly what will be needed to "avoid losing our vote in the General Assembly." We avoided losing it last year by about $40 million, but if we fulfill your benchmarks and work with people, including Joe Connor, who you will hear from later this afternoon, we will succeed in preventing that event. Senator Biden. Well, one last question. Again this is -- I know we know the answers to this, but I want to make sure we are clear on the record. The Helms-Biden bill requires a reduction in our assessment to 20 percent. Now, is that impossible to obtain, in your view, or is that possible to obtain?

We will fulfill the scale of assessment revision as laid out in the bill. It is certainly the most difficult of your benchmarks, but it is achievable, as you have formulated it in last year's bill. It requires, however, the deep understanding and collaborative efforts with many members of the United Nations, some of whose representatives are behind us today, most notably the chairman of the Fifth Committee, Ambassador Penny Wensley from Australia. And I want to pay tribute to her for her extraordinary shepherding of the budget through the last cycle, almost a solid week of 1-hour-a-night sleep, around-the-clock meetings until 4 or 5 in the morning. Our team was there, too, and she got it through, and we will look to her for leadership. The scale of assessments was last really revised in 1973. Since then, 56 nations have joined the U.N. Some countries have gotten richer, some have gotten poorer. There are countries that want to lower their rates. We are not the only ones that want to lower our assessment rate, and some have told me privately they are ready to raise their rate of assessment if it is part of an equitable package. We have hired outside consultants to do computer runs. We are talking to Governments and capitals, and here in New York. I will be traveling to other countries, starting in a few weeks, to talk this over. It is going to be tough, Senator Biden, but I absolutely believe it is possible, because in the end the actual dollar amount involved to go to the required rate under the legislation is only $39 million in the budget. It is not as much as people think. So we are talking a lot about symbolism, and I do not believe that the member States of the United Nations, who all care about it and who, as you heard first-hand today and yesterday, want American leadership, are going to oppose working with us on this issue, provided one thing, and this is critical. This issue cannot be divorced from our policies themselves, and it is the engagement of the United States in pursuit of our national interests and global stability and democracy that is critical here. It is our support of the policies in East Timor, and support of our brave Australian and Philippine allies, and our efforts in Sierra Leone and Kosovo and Bosnia and elsewhere, that have to go hand-in-hand. We cannot separate substance from management reform once Helms-Biden was passed. Until then, they were separate, for obvious reasons. It is a whole new ball game now, Mr. Chairman and Senator. With the passage of your bill, we are able finally to work toward an integrated policy, and I am so touched that so many Ambassadors came here today, because these are the people we work with, and by being here in the room, they are indicating to you that while they do not agree with everything that we do, they want to work with us, and so we are going to make -- as I told you during the confirmation hearings, this is our top sustained priority, and Secretary Albright is also working on it. Every trip she makes, she always includes this as part of her efforts.

Mr. Chairman, 10 seconds to conclude. There is a provision that we have in there that we have got to get this down to 22 percent, and then down to 20. If you cannot get it from 22 to 20, there is the ability for the Secretary to waive the condition to get it done. I would expect that you would be able to do this. That is our hope and intention, but I did want you to know there is -- I know you know this, but to know there is some flexibility. We do want to work with this, and I think it is time we reassess not just our position but other nations' positions. Ambassador Holbrooke. I well appreciate that, and I would just make one additional footnote, and that is that in the final analysis I believe that it is imperative that whatever our rate, we remain the largest contributor to the U.N. It would not be explicable if the world's richest nation, at the apogee of its economic power, its moral leadership, its cultural dominance in the world, to say nothing of our military preponderance, were to somehow not take the lead, and over and over again, on issue after issue, the most recent example being Vice President Gore's extraordinary appearance last week in New York on AIDS in Africa, when he announced that he and the administration would come to the Congress with a request for an increase, immediately, other countries, led by Japan, came forward and said they, too, will increase. American leadership, which is not simply rhetoric, is critical here. So Senator Biden, I completely understand your question. I just want to put a footnote down. I would not want to mislead the committee. I think it would not be explicable to the world if we were second to any other country. Now, that is a specific reference to one country, Japan. Japan pays about 19 percent right now, and they are pretty upset about the fact. They feel they got a pretty raw deal in the U.N. because they are not on the Security Council, and so on and so forth. Well, that is a separate issue, but the Japanese will have a major problem with their equivalent of the Helms-Biden package, and by the way, Mr. Chairman, you have your equivalent in the Japanese Diet now. They have been watching you, and they have got a committee which is starting to talk about the budget, and I met with them here in New York, and you are their role model. [Laughter.] Ambassador Holbrooke. And they talk to me about the Japanese Helms-Biden, so we have to be very, very clear about this one subplot. Other than that, we will get there, Mr. Chairman, Senator Biden. The Chairman. Japan, stay tuned. Senator Hagel. Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Maybe our next field hearing will be in Tokyo, Mr. Chairman. [Laughter.]

Mr. Ambassador, thank you for your hospitality. I would like to build on for a moment to what Senator Biden was focusing on. As we all know, the United Nations was formed 50 years ago to deal with the great challenges of our time. It was to be a relevant organization to deal with those challenges. I have heard much today, we have over the last couple of years, about United Nations peacekeeping responsibilities. My question, Mr. Ambassador, is this. Peacekeeping is about more resources, about manpower, about leadership, about commitment, and about money. At a time when Western democracies' defense budgets are going down, ours, after a long period of decline, is starting to go up. Are we going to shift resources in the United Nations away from other activities to deal with the added expenses of the peacekeeping commitments? You mentioned Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor -- we are talking about Africa, we are talking about so many areas of the world that need our help. If we are not going to shift resources within the United Nations to deal with the additional resources needed for the peacekeeping efforts, then where do those additional resources come from? Will they come from increased dues, or perhaps less U.N. activity across the board? I would be very appreciative, Mr. Ambassador, if you could reflect on that in as many ways and specific terms as you can.

Well, your question, Senator Hagel, goes to the heart of what we think the U.N.'s role is in our national security. In some cases the U.N. has been an abysmal failure. We mentioned the three most dramatic cases earlier. In other cases, the U.N. has succeeded. Those of you who were in the Security Council yesterday heard one country say that the U.N.'s peacekeeping operations had succeeded in a peaceful transition to democracy. I would submit that the activities of the Security Council and the U.N. from about Labor Day on of last year in East Timor were also successful, although the previous 20 years were not, so I believe that peacekeeping is a case-by-case issue. We cannot make a blanket judgment in which we become the world's policeman, and at the same time we have to look at each issue on its merits and say, is there something where the United Nations, supported by the U.S., can make a difference? Because the U.N. is only its member States; it is a bureaucracy, and that building on the East River is not what the U.N. is. They carry out what the member States tell them to, sometimes not to our liking, mine very much so. I am very unhappy with the U.N. Secretariat, as they all know, but they carry out our will, and this is a case-by-case basis. Sierra Leone is going to be on the table now, and the choice is very stark in Sierra Leone. Either vote a manageable increase in the U.N. peacekeepers, or risk a real bloodbath, in a country which has had some terrible scenes. I was in Minneapolis last year with Senator Grams, and we visited the Center for the Victims of Torture, and a lot of them were from Sierra Leone, and to see them, and then to sit in the U.N. Security Council and recognize that your vote could affect whether it happens again or not is a legitimate and important question. Now, there are no American troops involved in this. Either way, no Americans will be involved, but it will cost some money. Now, your question goes to the issue of fungibility. These are case-by-case issues in which under our laws we will have to notify you before we can formally approve these Security Council resolutions, and for better or worse, the Congress will get at least one notification in the not-too- distant future, in my view, and that will be Sierra Leone. And I will be happy to come back down to Washington and ask you to consider that on its merits. It's not going to be an excessive amount of money and the alternatives, it seems to me, are much worse, but it is not fungible, Senator Hagel, in the sense that we are going to take money out of UNICEF or the World Food Program. It has to go through this separate process. Senator Hagel. Well, with the remaining couple of moments I have, Mr. Ambassador, thank you. You understand the point of the question, because the American public pays the taxes and pays our portion of the United Nations funding. I think the public is occasionally confused by the U.N. role, and what its role will continue to be. I think occasionally we are all a little too glib in throwing around peacekeeping terminology when the American public wonders what that means. You are exactly right, the United Nations does not have a standing army; it comes from the United States and Britain and France, and all of the member States. But at a time, again I say, when defense budgets in those democracies are going down, except in the United States, if we project out 10 years, those projections become clearer and clearer that more resources are going to be needed. I do not expect you to have the answer now, but we will obviously talk more about it in the next year. I am concerned about where the funds will come from and, as we have said all day today, the worst thing we can do is fail. The worst thing we can do is give the world a high expectation that we will come to the rescue of the United Nations and member states of the United Nations, and in fact not fulfill the commitment that we have made.

I quite agree, Senator, and these are very tough problems. You and I both saw the U.N. spending $5 million a day in Bosnia in the early nineties, and a previous administration in the early 1970's voluntarily took the U.S. contribution peacekeeping up to 30 percent. The Helms-Biden package takes it back down to 25 percent. Not everyone in the U.N. is happy about that, but you were quite right to do it. 30 percent is an excessive percentage, and we are going to work for that. Meanwhile, we will have to deal with the real crises, and some of these are very unpleasant, but I think -- I hope I am not sounding overly optimistic, because that is not my style in regard to these issues, but I think that the pressure we are putting on -- for example, this deliberate, protracted delay we have put on the consideration of peacekeeping in certain parts of Africa because we do not think that the peacekeeping office has got a clear, coherent plan yet, we have been holding that up for 3 months now, and we are getting, even while we are supporting a priority for Africa, we have been attacked by some of the Africans for delay. I do not apologize for that. I told the Presidents -- Senator Feingold was with me, in fact, in Harare when President Mugabe turned to us and said, you are preventing peacekeeping, and Senator Feingold and I said, you are right, we are, because we are not comfortable yet. Senator Feingold spoke very eloquently to that issue. But now we have to deal with it. It is an extraordinarily difficult problem.

Thank you. Senator Feingold. Ambassador, let me first congratulate you on the wonderful use you are making of our American presidency of the Security Council this month. It is very productive, and of course I particularly appreciate the emphasis on Africa. But turning quickly back to the conditions and the reform issue, would you talk a little bit about the reaction of the other member States of the U.N. to U.S. calls for reform? I am a little concerned that some apparently regard the reform discussion as associated with a United States-driven or western-driven agenda, and I am terribly concerned about the devastating impact that corruption has on social and economic development abroad, as well as my interest in it in our own country where we have problems with that as well. So I wonder if you would comment on the issue of transparency and oversight, and the problem of it being cast in a political light, in the context of the U.N.

You are talking about within the U.N. system? Senator Feingold. I am, yes. Ambassador Holbrooke. I am very concerned about this. We have worked very closely with the Office of the Inspector General. We have been urging a quick replacement for Mr. Paschke, who has left the post. But the basic answer to your question, Senator, is that everything changed when the bill was passed. You asked about American leverage. It is a whole new ball game once we are sitting there with an actual set of checks in our hand and we say to Joe Connor, who has just arrived in the room, here is the money, but you have got to -- there are certain strings that are attached to it, and I would say, Senator, that the whole mood has changed. People who would not talk about the benchmarks until the passage of the bill are now willing to discuss them. And again, the very fact that so many distinguished Ambassadors are here today -- I see that the Ambassador from Britain has just arrived, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, is indication of the new mood that has been created by the passage of the bill and now by your presence here today.

I am pleased to hear that turn-around has occurred, but I do know that the Secretary General has publicly complained about micro management from dozens of different member States that can lead to sort of a paralysis with regard to various initiatives. Do you think that the U.S. reform agenda needs to be better coordinated with the initiatives of other States? Ambassador Holbrooke. Perhaps so, but when we see an abuse -- there are three or four that we are working on right now, which we are concerned with -- I will go direct to the Secretary General in private, as any other member State has the right to. Sometimes we work closely together. I have been working with Sir Jeremy in a couple of areas where we share a common concern, but not always. The British Ambassador and the American ambassador can disagree. We will work with them when we can, but we will speak unilaterally for the United States when we must. The goal is the same in every case. There are still inefficiencies in the system. They are everywhere. You can see them. It is not just the U.N. Almost any large bureaucracy has it. Oversight is not as strong in the United Nations, as particularly some of the other agencies it has been, but I do want to say one thing. I think the current Secretary General is doing an excellent job. I think that Kofi Annan is a remarkable international public servant. I was particularly gratified that he changed his schedule today to accompany you to the lunch, Mr. Chairman, and to participate. That is a very powerful signal to all 185 nations of the United Nations, when the Secretary General and the president of the General Assembly, who is from Namibia, walk in with you, and I would like to be clear that my criticisms of the Secretariat and the bureaucracy, which are much stronger in private than I am expressing them here today, in no way are a criticism of Secretary General Kofi Annan. Senator Feingold. Ambassador, we have talked about peacekeeping, and you know that I have on occasion voted against initiatives that would send U.S. troops abroad to address a crisis that I think in some cases would be better handled by regional leaders and sometimes regional forces, and you know that when we were in Africa, in virtually every country I wanted to hear about that issue in speaking to the presidents of the 10 African countries. With an eye toward the issue of burden-sharing, I would like to hear a little bit more about the state of relations between the United Nations and regional organizations like the OAU and the OAS with regard to burden-sharing.

In general, I think we would always prefer to put regional organizations forward first. In Europe, the OSCE, for example. I would rather see the OSCE deal with an issue than the United Nations, quite frankly. It is a smaller organization. It is more manageable. It has a mere 52 members instead of more than triple that at the U.N. The Organization of African Unity has a critical role to play in almost all the crises of Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, where Nelson Mandela is desperately trying to prevent a major blood bath, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, and the Congo. In East Timor, it is slightly more complicated because ASEAN does not want to be regarded that way, but it was basically what Senator Helms called in his speech yesterday a de facto coalition of the world led by our wonderful Australian allies, and I think it is extremely important to recognize this issue. The Australians have been with us in every war in this century, always. I cannot think of a better ally we have ever had in this century. And the Filipinos, who next week will replace the Australians as the commanders of the East Timor force, with the Australians becoming deputies, have also been with us throughout this century, and I would hope that this committee and the Senate would support our support of that effort. There are no U.S. troops under U.N. command, but we need to show our support for Australia and the Philippines and stability in this critical part of the world in Southeast Asia. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. I would say that regarding the next Senator, Senator Grams from Minnesota, that he probably ranks as one of the most conscientious Senators working on detail, and he spent a long time, a lot of time at and with the United Nations, and you are next, sir.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. I have a statement I would like to have entered into the record as if read. The Chairman. Without objection. Senator Grams. First a couple of comments, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I am pleased that the U.N. reform package that we worked so hard to draft was finally signed into law last year, and that the ball is now out of our hands and into the U.N.'s court. We are entering a new phase, as you have mentioned, as the chairman has mentioned, in our relations with the United Nations, one which I am confident and hopeful will be less adversarial, and I think that this hearing is going to go a long way to underscore that change in tone. The Foreign Relations Committee may be tough on the shortcomings of the United Nations, but we are fair, and we are sincere in trying to make this a more effective and an accountable organization. I think we are all working to reform the U.N. in order to ensure that it can rise to meet the potential that it has in this century, and as Secretary General Annan has noted, and I quote the Secretary General, he said, a reformed United Nations will be a more relevant United Nations in the eyes of the world. Now, while the desire for reform at the U.N. is widely held, the role of the United States in shaping that effort remains a matter of contention. Now, after having twice served as a congressional delegate to the United Nations, I am well aware of a lot of resistance to the benchmarks that are not due to the reforms, maybe, themselves, but to the fact that they are being proposed by the United States, and I hope these feelings will be put aside so that there can be a substantive debate on the merits of the reforms which the U.S. is proposing. Again, as I said, the ball is now in the court of the U.N. It may decide the reforms are too onerous, and forgo the $926 million Congress has authorized and appropriated to pay our arrears, and I hope that will not be the case, and that would mean the loss of a great opportunity to mend U.S.-U.N. relations, in addition to improving the U.N. itself. [The prepared statement of Senator Grams follows:] Prepared Statement of Senator Grams Mr. Chairman, I am pleased the U.N. reform package we worked so hard to draft was finally signed into law, and that the ball is out of our hands and in the U.N.'s court. We are entering a new phase in our relations with the United Nations, one which I am confident will be less adversarial. I think this hearing will go far to underscore that change in tone. The Foreign Relations Committee may be tough on the shortcomings of the U.N., but we are fair. And we are sincere in trying to make this a more effective and accountable organization. Fifty-four years ago, as the members of the United Nation's founding delegation met in San Francisco, there was great anticipation and a collective enthusiasm for this new, global institution. Delegates spoke of hope, of expectation, of the promise of peace. President Truman echoed these sentiments, telling the delegates they had, "created a great instrument for peace and security and human progress in the world." We are all working to reform the U.N. in order to ensure it can rise to meet its potential in the next century. As Secretary General Annan has noted, "a reformed United Nations will be a more relevant United Nations in the eyes of the world." And in this age, being relevant means that the great powers, including the United States, consider the U.N. to be a powerful tool in their foreign policy arsenal. We must be able to look to the United Nations as a helpful forum to resolve conflicts and engage like-minded allies in joint action. To this end, the United States must help shape the United Nations to be an organization that the U.S. needs as much as the U.N. needs the United States. It is true that many Americans are not aware the contributions the U.N. makes in less high profile areas then child survival and disaster relief. For example, the U.N. agencies that focus on technical cooperation play a crucial role in establishing and coordinating international standards for governments and businesses. However, none of these benefits excuse the massive and uncoordinated growth of the United Nations which was outlined by the Secretary General in the introduction to his reform plan. Reform is necessary -- not because Congress wants it, but to ensure the U.N. does not collapse under the weight of its own inefficiency. While the desire for reform at the U.N. is widely held, the role of the United States in shaping that effort remains a matter of contention. Having twice served as a Congressional Delegate to the U.N., I am well aware that a lot of the resistance to the benchmarks are not due to the reforms themselves, but to the fact they are being proposed by the United States. I hope those feelings will be put aside so there can be a substantive debate on the merits of the reforms which the United States is proposing. For the ball is now in the U.N.'s court. It may decide the reforms are too onerous, and forgo the $926 million Congress has authorized and appropriated to pay our arrears. That would mean the loss of a great opportunity to mend U.S.-U.N. relations, in addition to improving the U.N. itself. So while we are all here to celebrate the passage of the U.N. reform package and the payment of the arrears it is important to keep this new era in U.S.-U.N. relations in perspective. Shortly after the Helms-Biden package was signed into law, the U.N. approved a budget which is $2 million over a no-growth budget. While I am concerned this will cause the creation of new arrears just as we are settling the old ones, I am even more concerned about the message this sends to the United States. In a budget of $2.533 billion, there is no reason to have an overage of $2 million -- unless it is a slap at the United States. Indeed, the U.N.'s outgoing Inspector General Karl Paschke said the U.N. could cut $55 million from its budget if it would follow his recommendations. And I am very concerned one of our greatest reform achievements to date, an independent Inspector Generals office, has been jeopardized by the appointment of the Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs to serve as the temporary head of the OIOS. On its face, it would seem difficult to maintain OIOS' operational independence if the head of OIOS is responsible for providing legal support and advice to U.N. offices he is also auditing, investigating or evaluating. While I look forward to discussing the status of U.N. reform efforts, and the prospects for reform in the future, I would also like to take a look at the bigger picture of whether the U.N. is moving to impose norms which are anathema to many Americans. For example, a proposed protocol to the U.N. Convention on Transnational Organized Crime, supported by the Clinton Administration, would change the definition of sexual "trafficking" in women and girls to include only those who are explicitly forced into prostitution, not those who have been coerced. Religious conservatives and prominent feminists have joined in opposition to this move. These are the kind of actions by the U.N. which lead to the disintegration of support by the American people. I strongly believe that the U.N. is an important forum for debate between member states and a vehicle for joint action when warranted. However, the U.N. must endorse reforms that provide transparency and accountability so it can be embraced as an asset instead of viewed by some as a threat.

Ambassador Holbrooke, just a couple of brief questions dealing with African peacekeeping. Given your decision to devote a month to Africa on the Security Council, I was wondering if you would reflect on the ability and the wisdom of the U.N. embarking on a nontraditional peacekeeping operation on that continent. Now, while it is easy to see the potential role of peace keepers in border conflicts, like the one between Ethiopia and Eritrea, it is more difficult in the situation of Congo, so Mr. Ambassador, what is the precise mission of this proposed operation? Ambassador Holbrooke. Thank you, Senator. I also want to echo Chairman Helms' comments about you. This is at least the third time you and I have met in New York on these issues, and you have really carved out a special role as our most closely watching watch dog, and I greatly appreciate it. One comment before I address the question of the Congo. Your opening comments seem to imply that a reform proposed by the United States breeds some resentment because it comes from us. That may have been true when you were a delegate here, or earlier last year when the arrears issue was so red hot, but I think if you think back to that lunch, or this remarkable display of U.N. ambassadors here, if they were resentful I do not think they would be in this room. The Ambassadors are here to learn what your views are, and to help them work with us. I have not seen any resentment directed to us simply because we are Americans. Plenty of Ambassadors disagree with us violently on issues, but that is how it should work. I was warned about this by many people, including members of my own staff. I just have not seen it, and I do not think we saw any of it yesterday, Mr. Chairman. I do not think we saw it today. But I am not disputing the fact that it is a widely held perception. I just do not see it. This is a very generous set of people and repeatedly, as Ambassador Greenstock and Ambassador Choudry of Bangladesh, and Ambassador Hasmi of Malaysia said yesterday to Chairman Helms, and in fact in one way or another, every one of the 14 Ambassadors in that room, including those from countries not known for their closeness to Chairman Helms, said, they want American leadership. Now to your specific point on the Congo. I know of no more difficult issue that I have had to deal with in my career than Congo. You use the phrase nontraditional. Well, very little in this difficult and brave new world that the U.N. is trying is traditional. Kosovo is without precedent, as Senator Warner has already made clear several times today, and I agree with what he has been saying on that. Kosovo in fact is going to be the most difficult of all the problems the U.N. is going to deal with this year, including Congo. East Timor is without precedent. East Timor will become the fist new State of the 21st century, and the U.N. has been put in charge of being midwife. Kosovo is in an uncertain legal status, and the U.N. Security Council is hotly disputing what the resolution number 1244 actually means. Two or three countries in the Security Council say it means that Kosovo will always be part of Yugoslavia. The United States and Great Britain and others say that is not what it means, and as long as Milosevic is in charge in Belgrade we cannot do it. We cannot do anything about it anyway. So when you talk about nontraditional and Africa, I would just footnote we are in a world of extraordinary difficulties. They only have one thing in common, Senator Grams, and this includes Africa, East Timor, and the Balkans. They all stem from unresolved issues of sovereignty that stem from the breakup of empires and the drawing of boundaries in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century that caused enduring conflicts, and here we are in the 21st century dealing with them. They will not go away. They have sucked us in in various places. Timor is the one that has gone the best. Kosovo is by far the most complicated. Bosnia is doing pretty well, and Congo, well, President Mugabe arrived in town as we are holding this hearing from Zimbabwe. Seven presidents will be arriving in town over this weekend. We start the debate Monday. Secretary Albright, I am proud to say, will come to New York to chair that terribly important Security Council meeting. We have told the signatories to the Lusaka agreements that if they will not implement their own agreement we cannot support a peacekeeping effort. They have come here to reaffirm Lusaka, to update it, to take into account time lines that have shifted. Again, I want to single out Senator Feingold, because every step of the trip where this policy I am articulating was formulated, Senator Feingold was with me in the room, speaking separately for himself and for another branch, but with no division. Senator Frist, who could not be here today, was fully briefed by the CIA and the Pentagon before the trip, and I have been in constant touch with him. Congressman Paine, the Ranking Minority on the House side, was here earlier in the week, and I have been on the phone with Congressman Royce, Senator Frist's counterpart in the House, and he is going to come up next week to New York to participate in the debate, so we are going to work with you closely, as we work with the African leaders. It is much too early for me to predict where we are going, but I certainly share your use of the word nontraditional, and I hope to have your permission, Mr. Chairman, to report back to you along with Secretary Albright on this important issue in a couple of weeks.

Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. The Chairman. Senator John Warner is not a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, but he does not have to be. Our two committees, the Foreign Relations and the Armed Services Committee, which he chairs, work together closely, as we should. John Warner is a Senator's Senator, and I invited him, I urged him, to come and be with us today. Senator Warner. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN WARNER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE

I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. If I may say, in total sincerity, the leadership that you have shown, together with your distinguished colleague, the Ranking Member, and our distinguished Ambassador, Ambassador Holbrooke, you are a triumvirate that have made history. It is the right time, a new millennium, it is a right start, and this world cannot exist unless we as a family of nations, whether we are large or small, or rich or poor, can sit down, as we are today and yesterday, and address the tough decisions and provide as best we can the leadership and the answers as to what is to be done. So I will nominate you here and now for Profiles in Courage. Good luck. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.

Having said all that, yesterday Senator Helms was very frank with his comments. Mr. Ambassador, you have been very frank today, and I copied a sentence down. I will speak this sentence on the floor of the Senate in the not- distant future. You said, the United Nations will not get a third chance in peacekeeping, and you enumerated the historical context of that very profound and insightful observation. Courageous. You are among your peer group, and I say to you most respectfully, and this is not a reflection on the organization, certainly not the Secretary General with whom I spoke today, and I told him the same thing I am about to provide you in the form of a question. I just got back from the Balkan region a few days ago -- Kosovo and Bosnia. I have been there twice each year almost since 1992. I have spent a lot of time, and my committee has authorized enormous sums of money, close to $10 billion over this period of time, toward the United States contribution to help end the human rights violations in that area and helping the people. I say to you most respectfully, Mr. Ambassador, the U.N. is on the brink of failure, failure of the type that you said you will not get another chance, and these are not just my observations. They are the observations of the persons in the U.N. that are working courageously in this region and the military commanders of a number of nations. You know full well the long list of problems that confront the U.N. It is a challenge, and time is running out to fulfill that mission. There are tens of thousands of brave young men and women wearing uniforms of over 30 nations patrolling the streets, the alleys, day and night. As we sit here in the warmth and the comfort of this great city, they are exposed to everything, a tremendous risk, and you know what our Nation suffered in Somalia. That type of situation could happen any day, either in Kosovo or Bosnia. The infrastructure needed to provide a judicial system, the police that are needed not only for the street crimes but for international crime -- all of this is sadly lacking, and the U.N. has not been able to fulfill in a timely way its obligations. The military performed with courage in prolonged battles at great risk to life, and succeeded, and now they are holding together -- they are holding together a security blanket over both of these nations. But beneath that security blanket, particularly in Bosnia, are the most rapidly growing criminal syndicates in the world today. As one U.N. official told me, the best-organized thing in Bosnia today is organized crime, and we have got to put a stop to that. Now, it is one thing to make these observations, as tough as it is for me in my great respect for you and others, but I think that you have got to, together with the Secretary General, elevate this decisionmaking -- yes within the U.N. to the top levels, but also involve the heads of State and Government of the principal nations. And second, you may have to consider a special assessment to all nations to meet the financial needs. I mean, Pristina does not even have enough power to operate the lamps in the headquarters of the KFOR. So I urge you, what recommendations can you provide this committee today by which we can begin to have a timely fulfillment of the U.N. obligations, so that eventually the troops of our Nation and other nations can return home? Ambassador Holbrooke. Mr. Chairman, I have no choice but to agree with your assessment, because as you were in Kosovo, so was my senior counselor for the issues, calling me every day from rooms which had no heat, with one light dangling from his office. The situation is -- there may be some nuance differences, but it is enormously valuable for you to draw national attention, international attention to the fact that Kosovo is in a perilous state. I would differentiate, and I believe I understood you to be differentiating between Kosovo and Bosnia. Bosnia may not be going as fast as we want. I have been very publicly critical of it, but it is on the right track, but moving too slowly. Kosovo is a much more complicated situation, as we said earlier. I agree with you about the crime. There was an extraordinary -- the only thing I am not sure about is whether the crime is worse in Bosnia now than in Kosovo, but if it is, do not worry, Kosovo will catch up if we do not get this thing under control, particularly since it is linked in the situation in Albania itself. I agree with you about the infrastructure, but there is only one thing you said I would like to kind of do a slight calibration on, and it is actually not about the situation on the ground. It is about who is responsible. You said, and I quote, because I, too, take notes on what you said, that the U.N. is on the brink of failure in Kosovo. If we are on the brink of failure --

-- the entire region of the Balkans. Ambassador Holbrooke. I accept that, but if we are on the brink of failure, it is not the United Nations, it is the whole system. We cannot simply say that we are going to solve this through the U.N. Now, parts of the problem are the U.N. responsibility. Parts are the European Union responsibility. Let us be honest in this room. Some of my colleagues will not want to hear this. The power system in Kosovo was assigned to the European Union, so I think we have got to be honest about this one. They let the system collapse in the dead of winter. They are the reason people are freezing right now in Kosovo, and they themselves know it. I mean, I know I am going to get angry letters after this, but this is what you saw on your trip, and this is what my colleagues are reporting to me from freezing rooms.

You are correct. I failed to say, the U.N. and other international organizations. You are correct.

On the question of police, Secretary General Annan responded to you by agreeing with you earlier today, and I think the public record should reflect that he said that the United States was the best contributor in police, and he appreciated that, and he is very disturbed that we are running behind. And on the security side, that is a NATO responsibility, so I think what you said is as important as anything else, Mr. Chairman, we are going to discuss here today, which is a policy of enormous importance, is not in as good shape as it should be, and I know that Secretary Albright -- she and I have talked about this a great deal recently, as has Sandy Burger. We are all aware of the fact that things are not going, in Kosovo, at the pace that we had hoped at this point, but I can assure you that it has high-level attention, and I am sure that Chairman Warner's comments will increase that attention. The Chairman. This concludes this panel. Mr. Ambassador, you have been clear and responsive to all the questions, and I appreciate that, and I appreciate all that you and your associates have done to make this meeting and the earlier ones possible, so thank you very much, and we will call the second panel. The second panel will proceed to the table, and I see that our friend is setting it up. They understand that we are under pressure of time. We will give the folks who are exiting the auditorium a couple of minutes to do it, but if you will do so as quietly as possible, we would like to proceed. We appreciate the presence of everyone here this afternoon. Panel Number 2 consists of two friends, and two experts, and two Americans who I admire. Hon. John Bolton is Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in Washington, and Mr. Edward C. Luck is the Executive Eirector of the Center for the Study of International Organization, New York University School of Law, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. So I believe you understand the time restraints, and we want to move along as rapidly as we can. Mr. Bolton, we will first hear from you. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BOLTON, VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, FORMERLY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION AFFAIRS, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here today to appear before you and other members of the committee. I have a prepared statement I would ask be entered into the record, which I will summarize. The Chairman. Without objection, it will be done. Mr. Bolton. Mr. Chairman, here in the United States, this is really the third time in this century that we have had a major debate on the role of the United States, the place of the United States, among the nations of the world. What I would like to do today is try to just take a few moments to move beyond the precedent-setting Helms-Biden legislation and ask in both a theoretical and a practical way, "what comes next?" It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that there are basically three broad priorities for the United States in any international organization of which it is a member. The first is preserving and protecting our constitutional decisionmaking structures here in the United States. The second is to defend and advance American interests in those international organizations. Some may think that the organizations are Platonic structures designed to create a more perfect world. I view these organizations, instead, as places where the United States advances its interests. The third broad priority is maintaining American leadership while guarding against the imposition of unfair burdens. Now, Mr. Chairman, under those broad objectives, although there are many specific priorities, I would name four, looking ahead from today. First, I do not think there is much question that the United Nations can be a potentially useful tool of American foreign policy, but I would stress that it is not the only tool, and generally not even the preferred tool, and I think this goes centrally to questions of American national security. I think many people misread the lessons of the series of United Nations resolutions that were adopted under President Bush's leadership during the Persian Gulf crisis, that led to a vast overreach by member nations of the U.N. in peacekeeping operations. I think many of those lessons have been learned, but Mr. Chairman, we have been faced, just within the past year, by a very significant statement from the Secretary General. He said it in several different ways. I would just like to read one formulation of it. In May of last year the Secretary General said, and I am quoting now, "unless the Security Council is restored to its preeminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force, we are on a dangerous path to anarchy." I will repeat his phrase. The Security Council was the "sole source of legitimacy on the use of force." Mr. Chairman, this statement is flatly wrong. I believe it is a statement that is not supported by the U.N. Charter or by international practice, and it certainly has little or no support in the American body politic. I think it is a subject appropriate for debate in the U.S. Senate, and I hope that you will have a chance to do that. The second priority is that when we do choose the United Nations as a tool of our foreign policy interest, it is very clear from the historical experience that the United States must lead if the U.N. is to be successful. There is no substitute for American leadership. There is no other nation, there is no other combination of nations that can lead, nor, as I think has already been said here today, can we expect the Secretariat to lead. Indeed, I would go further. If the Secretary General were leading, I think he would be overstepping his bounds, and I think that would be a very bad precedent. Third, Mr. Chairman, while I am still in awe, quite frankly, of the Helms-Biden bill and the ability of the Senate and House to reach agreement on the arrearages question, I think you were necessarily constrained because you are, after all, members of the legislative branch. While I have no doubt that the conditions that are part of the Helms-Biden legislation will have a substantial and salutary effect, I do not think, unfortunately, they ultimately really get to the main problem, which is the enormous dysjunction in the U.N. system between voting power on budget questions and the contribution of financial resources. One nation, one vote on budget issues is a system which is broken and cannot be fixed. I think there are two alternatives. One is to move toward what was once called the Kassebaum-Solomon approach of basically $1, one vote, the other, the approach that I prefer, is to move toward voluntary contributions. I think some of the best-run U.N. agencies are funded voluntarily. I think that competition among U.N. agencies to be better run and better managed, and thus encourage more contributions from the United States and other Governments, would be a good thing. I think we have seen that voluntary contributions or systems of replenishments, as in the international financial institutions, can work effectively, and I think the more we talk about moving toward a real system of fully voluntary contributions, the better a 20 percent assessed American share will look. Finally, Mr. Chairman, the fourth priority is to ensure that in our use of international organizations they do not assume governmental functions. You spoke at length yesterday about the International Criminal Court. There are a number of other examples of such institutions and treaties that are under consideration or under debate. I think from the point of view of American foreign policy, preventing the assumption of governmental authority by international organizations has been and should remain our highest priority. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, Mr. Chairman, and wish you and the committee good luck. [The prepared statement of Mr. Bolton follows:] Prepared Statement of John R. Bolton Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, for the opportunity to appear before you today at this field hearing to testify about the appropriate role of the United Nations and other international organizations. I will summarize my prepared statement, which I ask be included in the record, and would be pleased to answer any questions the Committee may have. introduction For the third time in a century, the United States is having a serious debate about its place among the nations of the world. The first two of these debates (after World Wars I and II) concerned proposed American participation in specific international organizations (the League of Nations and the United Nations, respectively), and touched only lightly on larger issues. The ongoing third debate, by contrast, after the successful conclusion of the Cold War concerns precisely these larger issue of whether and to what extent America's freedom of action internationally and its own internal governance -- in effect, its sovereignty and its constitutionalism -- will be constrained by international agreements and organizations. Although the prevailing conventional wisdom is that America was wrong to reject the League and right to embrace the U.N., these two debates and decisions were then and are still now seen largely through the narrow lens of internationalism versus isolationism. Today's debate has far greater implications for the United States. It is more than a foreign policy debate because it also involves basic answers to the fundamental question: "Who governs?" overview Whether the League of Nations could have prevented World War II even with American membership is of mostly historical interest, but there is no doubt that our membership in the United Nations failed to prevent the Soviet Union from launching the Cold War. Indeed, starting with the 1946 debate over the withdrawal of Soviet troops from northern Iran, and the first Soviet boycott of the Security Council, the U.N. was the scene of many classic Cold War confrontations. Americans still vividly remember Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev pounding his shoe on his table in the General Assembly, or the display in the Security Council of dramatic photographs of Soviet missile facilities in Cuba in 1963. There is near total agreement that the Cold War brought gridlock to the Council, and rendered it largely (although not totally) incapable of fulfilling its original mandate in the U.N. Charter "to maintain or restore international peace and security." For the United States and its allies, the key lesson was that the unrealistic promises of "collective security" had failed yet again; strong political-military alliances such as NATO and an independent American nuclear deterrent replaced the increasingly hollow words of the U.N. Charter both to protect our liberty and to prevent "the scourge of war." During the 1960's and 1970's, while the Security Council remained largely frozen, anti-Western and anti-American majorities in the General Assembly, egged on by the Soviets, regularly and enthusiastically trashed our values and integrity and assaulted our world leadership. They attacked our friends, such as in the General Assembly's 1975 Resolution equating Zionism with racism. They undermined economic freedom by endorsing collectivist dreams to force a global redistribution of wealth such as the "New International Economic Order," often through the multifarious U.N. specialized agencies. And all the while, the U.N. bureaucracy grew like a coral reef -- no planning, no management, no goals, yet apparently blessed with eternal life. The U.N. had become, as Senator Daniel Moynihan descried it, "a dangerous place." By the mid-to-late 1980's however, the combination of a much stronger U.S. defense and foreign policy posture and the advent of "new thinking" in Soviet policy caused substantial change in the possibilities for the United Nations. The U.N. Secretary General helped negotiate a truce in the Iran-Iraq war that helped protect oil supplies from disruption in the Persian Gulf; free and fair elections were held in Namibia, leading it out of apartheid and into independence; and the U.N. played a constructive role in helping to end Cold War conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola and Central America. Most dramatically, in November, 1990, the Security Council authorized the use of force to repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, only the second time in the U.N.'s history (Korea being the first) where the Council had acted along the lines envisioned by the Charter's drafters. After the American-led forces won the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. persuaded the Council to take unprecedented steps to strip Iraq of its capabilities in weapons of mass destruction, provide compensation to the victims of its aggression, and maintain economic sanctions to encourage Iraqis to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The lesson seemed plain, for some at least: where there was a vital U.S. interest at stake, and vigorous, persistent U.S. leadership, the U.N. could play a useful role as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. However, many U.N. supporters immediately drew a different conclusion, arguing that the organization was now fully functional as envisioned in 1945. This erroneous but widely shared misreading coincided with the 1992 election of President Clinton, whose central foreign policy initiative was known as "assertive multilateralism." This redirection from a perceived "unilateralist" impulse in U.S. policy sought to channel more and more U.S. diplomacy through the United Nations and its specialized and technical agencies. Ambitious new "peacekeeping" activities were launched in such places as Somalia, where the Clinton Administration, though the U.N., tried its hand at "nation building." For the first time ever, the Security Council created international war crimes tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and urged the creation of a permanent war-crimes court. Multilateral negotiations on environmental matters and many other political, economic and social policy questions previously thought to be of largely domestic concern, were stepped up. The Clinton Administration's "assertive multilateralism," however, led directly to tragic failures in Somalia, political ineffectiveness and military incompetence in Bosnia, and the collapse of the post-Gulf War regime to weaken and isolate Iraq. It led also to several ill-advised arms control agreements, politically fashionable but militarily flawed agreements such as the Landmines Convention, unprecedented and far-reaching new international bodies such as the International Criminal Court, and potentially catastrophic environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol. Even initiatives thought buried in the 1980's re-emerged. The Law of the Sea Treaty was revived, U.N. specialized agencies began reconsidering the possibility of international regulatory roles, and new proposals for international tax schemes to fund U.N. activities (and thus to remove funding from the decisions of member governments such as the United States) appeared. the importance of international governance and organizations Although the failures of U.N. peacekeeping have received the most media and congressional attention, it is really the broader treaty and policy manifestations of "assertive multilateralism" that are the most troubling and have the most profound implications for the United States. Of critical importance here, we deal not with traditional "alliances" such as NATO, which have limited and clearly defined objectives, but typically with organizations (and treaty regimes) of "universalist" membership, whose core objectives include membership for virtually every state. America's interests in this broad arena are so diverse, and the threats so numerous that policymakers and analysts can often lose sight of the larger philosophical battle. There are, to be sure, some vital areas where globally-based institutions have and will continue to provide important venues for the pursuit of American national interests, such as advancing free trade and preventing international crime and terrorism. But both within the United States, and especially in Europe, more and more intense efforts are underway to constrain the roles in international affairs of nation states in general, and to constrain the United States in particular. This is the battleground of the third fundamental debate in a century about America's relations with other nations, and it marks a significant change in the way Americans have to think about foreign policy, at least, as we hope, if they intend to maintain traditional concepts of constitutionalism and independence. These fundamental American interests can be described in three ways: (1) preserving our ability to make critical policy decisions within the democratically-accountable structures of the Constitution, and not losing this capability to international organizations; (2) within those multilateral organizations where we are members, preserving and enhancing our political, military and economic national interests, especially the one just mentioned; and (3) within such organizations, maintaining an appropriate American leadership role while safeguarding against unfair financial and other burdens. What happens or not in the U.N. and other international organizations depends largely on critical political and economic developments at national and regional levels. For purposes of this analysis, their common importance stems from their often-simultaneous implications for U.S. national interests and sovereignty both in foreign policy and in domestic affairs. It is this relatively new, shared context that American decision-makers in the new century must bear constantly in mind. priorities for u.s. leadership Within this framework, American key priorities in the "international system" should be: 1. Treat international organizations as potentially useful tools of American foreign policy, not as the preferred (or only) vehicle. Even within their increasingly apparent limits, international organizations can play helpful roles in certain foreign policy contexts to help advance U.S. interests. In the Persian Gulf War, for example, the Security Council's authorization to use force to repel the Iraqi invaders of Kuwait was both an important political success, both internationally and in the domestic effort to convince Congress to do likewise. Nonetheless, it does not follow from the Persian Gulf example that we should always or even frequently invoke the Security Council when our vital interests are at stake. This logic is very much in doubt. In May, 1999, during the air campaign over Yugoslavia, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan insisted that "unless the Security Council is restored to its pre-eminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force, we are on a dangerous path to anarchy." A few months later, in his annual report to the U.N. membership, he said that actions such as Kosovo, undertaken without Council authorization, constitute threats to the "very core of the international security system." Both of these statements are flatly incorrect. They are unsupported either by the language and background of the U.N. Charter, or by over fifty years of experience of the Charter's operation. Nonetheless, substantial segments of "the international community" and many Americans fully believe that the Clinton Administration acted illegitimately or even "illegally" under "international law" in conducting military operations over Yugoslavia without express authorization by the Security Council. Within the next decade, we may well see other conflicts where the United States must decide whether and when to act, unilaterally or in concert with a few other countries, without first obtaining "approval" by the Council. The pattern of our behavior during this next decade, therefore, might well determine whether Secretary General Annan proves correct, or whether we maintain the capability for independent -- and, where necessary, unilateral military or other action. As a matter of "first, do no harm," if nothing else, our policy in international organizations must preserve America's independent capability for action to protect its interests. 2. Where the United Nations or another international organization is chosen as a tool of our policy, the United States must be prepared to lead the organization to our objectives. We have learned repeatedly that the U.N. as an entity neither has, nor should it have, the capability for independent action. It and other international organizations function as the agents of their member governments, and no more. Assuming these lessons as prerequisites, it follows that we entrust responsibility for an important undertaking to the U.N., the United States must understand that it alone has the possibility to lead the effort to a successful conclusion. It is unwise both as a matter of broad policy as well as tactically to assume that someone else will have either our best interests at heart, or our unique national assets necessary to be effective. Although there are many examples of this point, the most important has undoubtedly been the fate of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction ("UNSCOM"). When the United States provided clear leadership, during both the Bush and Clinton Administrations, technical support and overall policy leadership, UNSCOM achieved significant progress in eliminating Iraq's WMD capabilities. While far from perfect, UNSCOM stood nearly unequaled as a non-military example of international cooperation. When, however, the Clinton Administration ceded our de facto leadership of UNSCOM to the Secretary General, its effectiveness evaporated, and the entire Iraq WMD-control regime collapsed. UNSCOM's failure proves beyond dispute that if the United States is not prepared to lead those ventures that it entrusts to international organizations, it simply cannot count on them being protected through difficult periods, or being implemented effectively in calmer times. 3. Financing and governance structures in the U.N. system must change so that American interests are better reflected. Under the rubric of "sovereign equality," voting in most U.N. bodies reflects the "one-nation-one-vote" system. Simply as a matter of mathematics, this approach typically puts the United States at an enormous disadvantage. It did so during the Cold War when the Communist bloc and the Non-Aligned Movement ("NAM") routinely outvoted the United States and a few close friends on issue after issue. Even after Communism's demise (and the consequent irrelevance of the NAM), these voting patterns continued. Nowhere are they more important than in financial decision making, since most U.N. agencies allocate the monetary burdens of membership through purportedly mandatory "assessments," or percentages of each agency's budget that members are "required" to remit annually. The United States' share (derived under a complex and antiquated formula) is typically twenty-five percent, easily the largest share of any member government. The temptations for the minor (indeed, tiny) contributors to increase agency budgets and require the large contributors to meekly pay up has, over the years, predictably proven completely irresistible. Indeed, many Western countries, and even the United States itself, have often shown a lack of budgetary discipline. But the plain fact is that financial decision-making in the U.N. is broken almost beyond repair. It is the enormous disjunction between voting power and financial responsibility that has caused so much of the dissatisfaction within Congress that we see reflected in the withholding of U.S. assessments, and the attendant creation of large "arrearages" which have been the subject of so much recent debate. Instead of simply acquiescing to demands that the U.S. "pay up," or remaining at loggerheads over the disputed amounts, potentially forever, Congress has sought to impose a variety of conditions on the payments both of the accumulated arrearages and the regular assessments. Such legislative restrictions are, of course, the only alternative for Congress, but we should also consider steps that might be taken if a more realistic and hard-headed President were to assume office in the near future. The long-term solution to America's Gulliver-like position in the U.N. system is either to change the one-nation-one-vote approach on financial matters, or to replace the system of assessments with voluntary contributions. Neither of these alternatives will be easy, and both will require a long-term commitment and considerable diplomatic effort. Indeed, ultimately, neither may be obtainable. But if the United States is unwilling to make a substantial effort, the present pattern of dissatisfaction and frustration will simply continue indefinitely, and, in short order, call into question the utility of continuing our Sisyphean efforts at U.N. "reform." 4. Prevent the assumption of "governmental" authority by international organizations. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been considerable commentary and a commensurate level of international activity to create new multilateral structures and regulatory frameworks to constrain nation states. For example, a variety of arms control agreements such as the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Landmine Convention have created new international norms and regulatory secretariats. The Kyoto Protocol, if implemented, would result in profound changes in the domestic policies of many signatories in the field of energy policy and economic policy more generally. In June, 1998, negotiators signed the Statute of Rome, which created an new International Criminal Court with purported jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Europe, the members of the European Union have been consciously and deliberately ceding sovereign authority to the European Commission in Brussels. Several of these new agreements and structures have required signatories to undertake changes of constitutional dimensions in their domestic political arrangements, and many have done so willingly. Indeed, many believe that there is a global trend toward the disintegration of the nation-state, reducing its autonomy and independence of action, in favor of authority being transferred increasingly to multinational bodies. The United States has, quite properly, not been a participant in this exercise. What we can observe of its course to date, however, demonstrates that inevitably accompanying the trend toward integration is the loss of democratic accountability, and the weakening of national constitutional structures and protections without their replacement by adequate substitutes. In countries, even in democracies, where elite-driven politics are the norm, this pattern may be acceptable, but it should not be acceptable to Americans.

International organizations and governance topics cut across a wide range of regional and functional topics without fitting comfortably into either. As such, they have often received inadequate attention in both policy analysis and decision making. While heretofore, the costs of relegated these issues to a secondary role have not been enormous, that calculus is changing. We can improve policy making considerably simply by being more conscious of the precedent-setting effects of foreign policy decisions that, in the long term, might compromise American sovereignty. But much also depends on an enhanced awareness in the post-Cold War era that America's unique experience with constitutional democracy now faces a new challenge, which we ignore at our peril. The Chairman. Well, we are honored to have you here, and I thank you. Mr. Luck.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD C. LUCK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW AND THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY,

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like to submit my statement for the record and just note a few key points now. The Chairman. Absolutely, without objection.

First, I would like to join the others in complimenting you on coming up to New York City. Sometimes we have the impression that all of Washington is moving to New York, and we consider this quite a compliment, and we are pleased to see it is happening on a bipartisan basis as well. Now, I would say, Mr. Chairman, that while I hope very much that the bill that you and Senator Biden and others worked so hard to bring about will offer a new era in U.S.-U.N. relations, I must temper my optimism with five rather large caveats. First, whether the other member States will accept all of these benchmarks and conditions is still an unknown. Second, will other member States follow our example and start withholding? Ambassador Holbrooke mentioned the problem with the Japanese Diet. There could be others who do this for reasons that might not be terribly friendly to our own interests. Third, I wonder whether future Congresses might say that the U.S. got so many concessions from other member States by this withholding, let us do it again, and for other conditions. Maybe you have started a pattern, and maybe we will have many chapters, not just one chapter, being opened now. Fourth, I wonder if this is really going to help the fundamental problem in U.N. reform, which is that the member States simply do not agree on an agenda. There has been a fair amount of movement in the Secretariat, but other member States, as you know, are very resistant to being told what to do, or otherwise we will withhold additional funding. And finally, some of the provisions of your bill relate to other U.N. agencies that are autonomous, that have their own budgets, their own leadership, their own member States, and yet the U.N. would be penalized if they do not follow the U.N.'s example, and that, I think, could be a problem. Now, where does this lead us? Let us assume that all of this is accepted, that all of this moves in a positive direction. I would suggest a six-point agenda of where we might go from here on matters that are really fundamental. First, and this is a chapter from Senator Hagel's book, is the whole question of looking for a bipartisan approach. It is very hard in our country right now for anyone to say that he or she represents the views of all Americans. We are deeply divided on these issues. Now, maybe you succeeded in your legislation because there was not a large public debate, but partly because of that, I do not think that we have healed these divisions throughout the public, and I believe there is a need for much more discussion between right and left and between Republicans and Democrats on these issues. We simply have to be able to speak with one voice in international fora. Second of all, Mr. Chairman, you pointed out one of the right topics yesterday on the question of sovereignty. I would agree much more with Senator Biden's approach. I do not think our sovereignty is so threatened, but I do believe that this is a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with very seriously, and I take your writings and comments on this with a great deal of seriousness. Third, I think we ought to recognize that multilateral cooperation generally is burgeoning in field after field after field, and all sorts of institutions and arrangements are being created at the same time that we are squeezing the U.N., especially the central U.N. It is like there is a very diverse, vague universe out there, and the U.N. is a rather small piece of that. The Secretary General has relatively little control over what is happening more generally, so if you are worried about sovereignty, if you are worried about such things, it may not be in the U.N. Secretary General's control to do very much about it. And here I would disagree with John -- it is very unusual that I would ever disagree with him, of course -- on the question of voluntary funding, and I know, Mr. Chairman, that you have written yourself that you favor most funding to be voluntary. We are moving in that direction anyway, I believe somewhat unfortunately, as the wealthier States pick and choose among particular priorities, and particular programs that they care about at the moment. And what you end up with is most of the funding being extrabudgetary, most of the funding in that way is not really planned, it is not systematized. We have a lot of ad hoc-ery, and that makes it very, very difficult if you are trying to reform the system, because you do not really have control over the money, and you cannot really plan in a systematic way what is going to happen. Now, added to this, I would say fourth, we have to pay more attention to non-State actors. The U.N. was set up as the quintessential intergovernmental body, but more and more of the interesting things that are happening are outside of Governments, and important things. So the question is, how do you bring non-State actors into the dialog, how do you let them have a voice without destroying the system and giving them a vote? That very much remains to be seen. Fifth, I would suggest that we need much more discussion about how the international community goes about enforcing decisions of the Security Council or of other bodies. Now, we have heard some of the dilemmas about Kosovo. Well, we are going to hear about those more and more in other places down the road. There is fundamental disagreement now about who should be on the Security Council. A number of member States are even challenging whether the veto ought to be kept, or whether there ought to be many countries with the veto. Economic sanctions are very controversial because of the humanitarian effects. Military action is very difficult for the U.N. in any sensible way to mount. We have seen even this week a very divided Security Council, and the harmony that we saw at the end of the cold war has not lasted very long. Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me suggest that we really need a new modus vivendi between the United States and the other member States. The old system is breaking down. The question really is about power and decisionmaking. We may talk about budgets, we may talk about reform, but fundamentally it is a question of power within the system, and on the U.S. part we have to decide whether we are ready or not to live within the rules, to live within the system. Basically, I think your legislation is saying no, we could not get what we wanted through the system, so we did it our own way. I think the other member States have to decide whether or not they are ready to accommodate American power, because if there is such a dysjunction that American power outside the organization is not reflected inside the organization, that could be very bad both for the U.S. and for the world organization. So with this, let me say that I think we ought to have a new international political compact to go along with a new domestic one. Thanks very much. [The prepared statement of Mr. Luck follows:] Prepared Statement of Edward C. Luck Mr. Chairman, you and Ambassador Holbrooke should be commended for transporting your distinguished Committee to New York to see first hand the United Nations at work. For those of us who have long fretted over the communication gaps between Congress and the world body, we trust that you have managed to trim at least a few miles from the seemingly endless distance between New York and Washington. I am also pleased to see, whatever our differences on the specifics, your continuing effort to raise the public visibility of U.N. reform issues. In my brief comments today, Mr. Chairman, I would like to raise a few questions about the future of U.S.-U.N. relations and the prospects for deeper U.N. reform. Now that the Helms- Biden provisions have become law and the first payments on U.S. arrears to the U.N. have been paid, there may be some reason for tempered optimism, though with some very large caveats, as follows: First, there is no guarantee that the other U.N. member states will accept the multiple conditions, or benchmarks, for the second and third years of arrears payments under the bill. Particularly onerous, in their view, are the unilateral demands for a reduced U.S. share of the regular budget and peacekeeping costs and for setting aside more than one-third of U.S. arrears in a contested arrears account. Others may well seek off-setting concessions from us in return for bowing to these demands. Second, down the road other member states could well follow our lead and begin to condition their U.N. payments on various benchmarks that we find obnoxious. Now that America's traditional adherence to the legal standard that assessed contributions should be paid on time, in full, and without conditions has been abandoned, what will be the long-term consequences for the integrity of the principle of collective responsibility and for the viability of international institutions? Third, what lesson will future Congresses learn from this episode: that the more they impose unilateral withholdings, the more concessions the other U.N. member states will make? Based on the current precedent, will there be further rounds of withholdings and acrimony in the years ahead, diverting attention from the urgent task of finding a common platform for building a stronger and more effective U.N. system? Fourth, it is hardly coincidental that the Secretary General has been far more forthcoming in terms of initiating and implementing reforms than have the other member states. Our unilateral withholding tactics have been counterproductive in terms of persuading other sovereign countries that the reforms we seek can benefit their national interests as much as our own. It should have come as no surprise that other states have been reluctant to accept changes pressed on them by publicly announced and unilaterally imposed financial pressures. As a result, the progress on the secretariat side has not been matched by inter- governmental agreement on the more fundamental questions of priority-setting and restructuring. Fifth, we need to be careful not to mix apples and oranges. The law would punish the central U.N. for the sins of independent agencies, specifically the ILO, FAO, and WHO, which have their own budgets, memberships, and governing bodies. Likewise, we have given the cause of U.N. reform a bad name -- in the eyes of others -- by mixing needed improvements, such as strengthening the inspector general system, adopting sunset provisions, and increasing transparency and accountability, with our understandable desire to reduce our national payments to the world body.

Let me assure you, Mr. Chairman, that I am not calling for a rollback of the legal provisions that you, Senator Biden, Ambassador Holbrooke, and others have worked so hard to achieve through the give-and-take process of legislative compromise. The question at hand, however, is how do we proceed from here? The first step, in my view, is for Americans of different political persuasions to begin a serious dialogue on what kind of a U.N. our nation wants and needs in this new century and on what we are prepared to contribute to the realization of our vision. For much of the past century, partisan and Congressional-executive differences have left our nation with a muffled and ambivalent voice in international fora. Hopefully your efforts to build bipartisan support for the Helms-Biden provisions will mark a turning point. In twelve months, our nation will have a new President and a new Congress. They will need to be vigilant in working with the Secretary General on consolidating the management gains that are underway. But they will also have the opportunity of engaging the other member states in a more far-reaching review of the functions, priorities, structures, and decision-making processes of the world body. The member states are deeply divided on these strategic matters, but they are also acutely aware of the dangers of institutional drift and marginalization. As much as they resent our withholdings, most of them recognize that only renewed American leadership can point the way toward a revitalization of the world body. Over the past decade, while surface-level reforms absorbed our attention, both the U.N. and the conditions in which it operates were undergoing some fundamental changes without the guidance of any blueprint or plan. Multilateral cooperation is burgeoning in field after field, spurring the creation of countless organizations and arrangements. Yet many of the most consequential, such as the WTO, have been placed outside of the U.N. system. We have insisted that the central U.N. contract year after year in terms of staff, of real spending, and of authority. Those who prefer voluntary to assessed contributions -- even for peacekeeping -- have largely won the day. The regular budget now covers less than one-fifth of U.N. system-wide spending and extra-budgetary outlays far exceed those that are assessed. More and more, the wealthier countries -- and even private donors such as Ted Turner -- are bypassing the regular budget process to fund unilaterally selected program initiatives. As a result, ad hoc priority setting is coming to replace coherent planning and truly multilateral decision-making. Consequently, the pieces are prospering and the center is fading. At the same time, transnational non-state actors of all kinds -- NGOs, PVOs, research communities, the media, the private sector, religious and ethnic movements, and the unsavory elements of uncivil society -- have been playing a larger and larger role in shaping the choices and priorities of public policy in a period of cheap and instantaneous global communications. Most of these groups, moreover, act largely beyond the jurisdiction and oversight either of national governments or of the U.N. Given these trends, what hope does a wounded United Nations have of taming this vast, undisciplined universe of transnational organizations and arrangements, which are composed of an ever-changing mix of governmental, semi- governmental, and non-governmental actors? Nevertheless, the Secretary General does his best to achieve greater coordination within the U.N. system. But the larger picture is that the world, and the multilateral system in its image, is restructuring itself in ways that we barely comprehend, much less control. Perhaps this is as it should be: change without reform, adaptation without planning. For a dominant power, like our country, it may be just as well to let the pieces fall where they may, to bend or ignore the old rules as circumstances dictate, and to champion the virtues of ad hocism and expediency in the name of realism and pragmatism. But the price, at some unknown future juncture, may be greater than we can imagine at this time of exceptional power and wealth. Half a century from now, our children may well regret our lack of foresight, our reluctance to try to consciously reshape the system when we have the power, when we are in the driver's seat. If not now, when will the time be ripe? Mr. Chairman, though I have begun to explore these themes in my recent book, Mixed Messages, I would not pretend to have any quick, easy, or sure answers to the dilemmas and challenges before this Committee and before the United Nations. But of two things I am reasonably confident: one, that we will not be able to get where we want to be by drifting and squabbling among ourselves; and two, that we will not find the right answers until we begin to pose the right questions. Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to raise these issues with you and with your distinguished colleagues. The Chairman. Very well. Thank you, sir. Now then, Bertie and I are going to work out a little timing situation here. We are going to give you 5 minutes for each question, including the Chairman and Vice Chairman, but I will have him put on the red light just briefly at the end of 4 minutes and then go back to green, and you have got 1 minute, and then we will have to cut you off, because these folks want to get home, and certainly I do, too. So if you will mind, no preface, if you will just ask your questions and be done with it, that will work out fine. All right. Here we go. Have you got it, Bertie? Good. Recently, Mr. Bolton, as you mentioned, Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly proclaimed that only the United Nations Security Council can legitimately authorize the use of force in international affairs. Now, I came out of my chair when I read that myself. Specifically he stated, and I am quoting, "unless the Security Council is restored to its preeminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force, we are on the path to anarchy." End of quote. Now, I think the world of Kofi Annan, but I just wonder if you think that his doctrine infringes on the sovereignty of individual members of the United Nations to pursue policies that are in their national interest.

Well, to the extent that that view were to prevail within the United Nations, I think it would be very harmful to the United States. That has never been the view, to my knowledge, of any American Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense. It has never really been proclaimed, as far as I know, by any other U.N. Secretary General. I do not know what motivated the Secretary General to say it. It is a flat and unequivocal remark, and I am constrained to say just as flatly and unequivocally it is wrong. We should reject it. We should say publicly that we reject it, and we should make it clear that if that is his thinking, he ought to think again. The Chairman. Mr. Luck. Mr. Luck. Well, I think there is a little bit of wiggle room in the charter with Article 51, which recognizes the right of self-defense of individual nations. I think the view he was expressing is that of a purist on the U.N. Charter. I am not sure I would always agree with John on this, but I do think in fact over time we have seen member States interpret the charter rather flexibly, and this is one of those places. It obviously helps our international legitimacy if the Security Council agrees and if other member States participate, but I would not restrict American use of force simply to the times the Council could agree, because we first had our problems in the cold war, now we are having another set of problems and differences on the council. The Chairman. Maybe sometime we could have a debate on that. The second question is for you, sir. Many nations still consider the United States a dead-beat Nation, even after enacting a plan to pay $926 million to the United Nations, the Helms-Biden bill, tied to long-discussed common-sense reforms. Now, how can the United States be called a dead-beat when it has contributed so much to U.N. peacekeeping operations and military missions pursuant to Security Council resolutions, and that amounts, John, to more than $8.7 billion, according to the General Accounting Office. Mr. Bolton. Well, I think that this impression that somehow the United States' objections to payments for certain obligations to which it has objected represent a breach of faith by the United States with the organization, thus making it a dead-beat, is really something that has poisoned relations between the members of the United Nations and the United States. The fact of the matter is that the allocation of assessments is fundamentally a political question within the General Assembly, and the idea that a majority of nations can decide what our share is and then when we, for good and sufficient policy reasons, do not vote it, that that is somehow has put us in breach of our obligations, I think is a canard. It is part of the problem with the entire system of assessments, which when you can count year after year after year on 25 percent from the United States and 31 percent for peacekeeping, creates a kind of welfare entitlement mentality, and the way to break it is to move to voluntary contributions. The Chairman. I want to give Mr. Luck a bite at this question. Mr. Luck. Here, I would depart a bit from John and I am afraid from your viewpoint as well, Mr. Chairman. We have a preference in this country for doing things voluntarily. We do not like being told that things are assessed, or that they are obligated. Most other member States and most other parliaments, on the other hand, prefer to say there is an international bill, we have a treaty obligation, and therefore we will pay it. It does seem to me that it is not really fair for us to do certain things militarily around the world and then to say, gee, coincidentally our action supported a U.N. operation and now you should recognize this as part of our obligation. I believe that peacekeeping costs ought to be assessed, and we ought to pay our dues. If we provide support for U.N. operations directly, then we should be, and are supposedly, reimbursed for those. But if we decide to have the Sixth Fleet deployed in the Mediterranean or in the Persian Gulf and it happens that the U.N. also has a problem with Iraq, perhaps because we help to persuade the Security Council to pass a resolution, it does not mean it is only their concern and we are just doing them a favor. This happens to be a place where our actions coincide with the U.N., and our interests coincide. The Chairman. Good. Thank you.

Senator Biden. Thank you very much. I notice, Mr. Chairman, you were explaining the clock. The only people who fully understood it in the room were the lawyers, because they understand how abrupt the Supreme Court is in 5 minutes. They cut you off in mid-question. So we are a kind compared to them. Mr. Bolton, Mr. Secretary, I read your statement. I do not have time now, but I think you engaged in a little bit of revisionism on Somalia, and in Bosnia relative to Clinton and Bush, but I am going to write you a note as to why I think it is different and we can discuss it.

[Senator Biden's statement on the points referred to above follows:] Additional Statement of Sen. Biden Mr. Bolton's prepared statement contains some assertions that amount to historical revisionism. The record should be corrected. First, he suggests that the Clinton Administration launched the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The truth is that the U.N. mission in Somalia was "launched" in December 1992 under the authority of U.N. Security Resolution 794 (1992), at the end of the Bush Administration. To be sure, a Security Council resolution was passed in March 1993 -- in the first months of the Clinton Administration -- that started a new phase of the peacekeeping mission. But the Somalia expedition began under President Bush. Second, he implies that Clinton Administration policies "led directly . . . to political ineffectiveness and military incompetence in Bosnia." True, the Clinton Administration's policies on Bosnia left something to be desired in the initial years of President Clinton's first term -- and I said so at the time. But the foundation for this policy was poured during the Bush Administration, which made a decision to yield leadership on the Yugoslav crisis to the Europeans. The war in Bosnia, it will be recalled, commenced in April 1992. It is an undisputed fact that the UNPROFOR mission was established during the Bush Administration; the weak mandate of UNPROFOR was sanctioned and countenanced by President Bush's administration. Moreover, it was the Clinton Administration that launched the NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs in September 1995, which played a key role in rolling back Bosnian Serb battlefield gains and in ending the fighting. It then convened the Dayton peace talks, which yielded the diplomatic settlement that, while far from perfect, still offers the best chance for lasting peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I do not think you have to worry about there being any debate on the Secretary General's statement about the sole source of sovereignty is the Security Council. Nobody in the Senate agrees with that. There is nothing to debate. He is dead, flat, unequivocally wrong, and both, I would say to Mr. Luck, who I agree with a great deal more than I you do, John, we have been through this exercise for years, that I cannot even figure how one gets that interpretation from the document, unless we had put into effect the provision of the U.N. which calls for the ability to establish a multinational force in advance. We have not done that, so it does not even get into play. It is a statement that an overexuberant politician like I am might make on another matter, but I hope he did not mean it if he did. I love him, but he is flat-out wrong. There is nothing to debate. We totally agree on that. Now, let me suggest and ask you, Professor Luck, you indicated that there were four pieces, five pieces of concern you had and six prescriptions for how to proceed. The prescription to proceed is the need for a bipartisan foreign policy. My colleagues might not agree with this, but I truly believe that the Helms-Biden bill was as much an effort to resolve within the Senate and the House and reach a bipartisan consensus among us where we, the U.S. Congress, both parties, stood relative to the United Nations. So I think it is important to look at this from two places, and I really mean that, not merely the empirical evidence that supports the following conditions requirements and provides the following money, but it took a long way to get there. It took us 3 years. 3 years. And the fact that he and I cosponsored together and fought for and got a majority of both the House and the Senate to be with us on this is, I would argue, a first start, a first step in reestablishing some bipartisan consensus. The second point I would like to make and ask is a question, before my time is up, and that is, you indicated there were five concerns. I share your concerns about whether or not we can get it done, whether or not we started a precedent followed by the Japanese Diet and others, whether or not -- I am much less concerned about whether further Congresses will decide to make this a practice. I do not think that is a reasonable concern, and I do not think it is a likely concern. But the fourth one I think is the $64 question, and that is, the agenda. This does not solve in any way, nor do we think it would, nor did we suggest it might, the need for the member States to reach some consensus among themselves on an agenda, an agenda for the United Nations. My question to you is, how does that process get underway? Is it bilateral, then multilateral, head of State to head of State, and then it gets to the United Nations, or can it actually in any way be generated from within the U.N.? Mr. Luck. Well, having watched the intergovernmental discussions for a number of years now at the U.N. on reform, I do not think you simply put it into a committee of 188 member States and expect something great to happen on the other end. I think you need a coalition of States, and from different parts of the world, not just with our normal favorite allies, but people from Africa, Latin America, Asia, whatever, trying to find some common ground, and then work it from there. The first big hurdle was getting over the U.S. arrears, because half the discussion was about the United States, not about U.N. reform. Then the question is finding a positive agenda, because I think we have been looking at reform as a negative, as a sort of punishment for the U.N. We need to have a more positive agenda that others can buy into, and then I think there would be a possibility, but it will not be quick or easy.

And by the way, we are not all moving to New York. We came to New York because we know most New Yorkers do not recognize there is a Washington. They still think New York is the capital of America. I understand that. That is one of the reasons why we came.

I assumed it was Friday, and everyone wants to come to New York when it is weekend time. The Chairman. Senator Hagel. Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Bolton wanted to respond.

I just wanted to say briefly I am happy to have the Biden corollary to the Helms speech yesterday. Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, Thank you. The Chairman. Senator Hagel. Senator Hagel. Gentlemen, thank you. We are always grateful for your testimony and your thoughts. A question for each of you. Obviously, over the last 50 years the scope of U.N. activities, programs, commitments, obligations, and responsibilities has widened considerably. My question is, is the U.N. trying to do too much? Mr. Bolton, would you like to start?

Well, I think the answer to that is yes, and I would address it in two ways. First, I think both in the United Nations itself, and in the specialized agencies, that there is simply too much emphasis on economic and social questions covering a wide variety of fields that are best left either to regional organizations or to the nation-states themselves. I think one of the reasons for budget bloat over the years is that economic and social programs in the U.N. system have grown like a coral reef, utterly without plan, and without constraint. Until that mentality changes you are fundamentally going to get a leaner United Nations. But second, the United Nations is only a reflection of its members' will, or at least it should be, and what has happened, and I can certainly testify to this from my own experience at the State Department, is a temptation by governments, looking at a problem that they know they cannot solve or will not solve, to be able to say, "well, let us have the United Nations get involved." This is a very serious problem. I think in peacekeeping operation after operation, when member Governments, for good and sufficient reason, have not been willing or able to engage themselves because they did not consider it in their national interest to do so, they have been willing to say, well, let us have a U.N. peacekeeping force, let us have some U.N. involvement like that, in part because they know that the United States would pay for 31 percent of it. I think that has got to change, too. Senator Hagel. Thank you. Mr. Luck.

I think the U.N. is trying to do too much, because the member States do ask it to do more and more, and I would point out that there is a little paradox, because we, too, in this country ask the U.N. to do more. At the same time, we are asking it to do so with fewer resources and fewer people, and at some point it has just got to be spread too thin. Second, I think there is a fundamental problem of priority- setting in the organization. Any business with 188 members on its board of directors from all over the world is going to have a problem setting priorities. It is a real difficulty in the organization. One of the things I did like in the Helms-Biden legislation -- there are many things I do not like -- but one thing I did like is that it does flag the need for sunset provisions, and that is very important. I worked on a staff basis for the committee trying to eliminate some of the underbrush in the General Assembly, some of the subcommittees and whatever. Quite frankly, we went through scores and scores and scores of them, but there was always some country that wanted each body to be continued, some State, and so it was continued. But I must say, this idea of only operating and deciding by consensus, that makes choosing so difficult, was something that the U.S. wanted because of the budgetary question. We insisted that there be consensus-based decisionmaking, and now this is the downside of that, because if one or two countries get up and object, you do not have a consensus, and you cannot get rid of things, so we might rethink that one as well. Senator Hagel. Thank you.

Can I just add one point on that, and that is, I think the limits of consensus budgeting have been reached, and I think it may well be appropriate to go back and have votes if we are going to have an assessed budget, and let us see how those votes shake out.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bolton. Mr. Chairman, could I beg your indulgence? I have a commitment. I have got to get to Dulles Airport to pick my wife and daughter up, and I am looking for a cab driver in New York who is going to, within the limits of the law, get me to La Guardia quickly, so my apologies. I thought we might start earlier, but I have enjoyed the time. The Chairman. I understand. We thank you for coming, John.

Thank you. Mr. Luck. I think he did say that I could speak for him. [Laughter.] The Chairman. Russ Feingold. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Other countries, Mr. Luck, have suggested reforms for the U.N. that are clearly not included in Helms-Biden, and one area that I think you referred to is the composition of the Security Council. Could you comment on some of those ideas, and what you think of the course that should be taken?

Well, one of the things that really worries me is that, if you look at the majority of member States, their idea of reform goes exactly in the opposite way that we probably would want. Most member States feel that they are in an organization that the U.S. dominates. They do not feel that the organization is somehow controlling the U.S. they see it the other way around, and many of them would like to limit the prerogatives of the five permanent members. Many of them are very resentful of the veto. Many of them would like to see more committees be committees of the whole, so that everyone gets a voice. This is a very, very deep and difficult problem. If you get a Security Council that, let us say, has 25, 30 members in it, and you move up from 5 vetoes to 7, 10, whatever different formula is come up with, the harder and harder it is going to be for that Security Council to act, because more and more States will be saying not here, not there, not somewhere else. The biggest problem now is not that the U.N. is too powerful, but that it is too weak. One of the reasons that it is too weak is because you cannot get agreement on these kinds of things, and I fear that things are going to be more and more difficult in the Council in the future. Senator Feingold. You are obviously done a lot of research, and you are a qualified observer about the U.N. You have had occasion to search through U.N. records and speak with U.N. employees in order to further your research. In your experience, how transparent have you found the organization's financial and administrative practices to be? Is it a culture of openness and accountability, or is it one of secrecy?

Well, I would say on the program side, in activities, the organization has become more open and more transparent. On the question of budget and accounting questions that you are asking, it is very, very difficult. I am not sure it is intentionally that way, but it is a rather opaque organization. Part of it is that the very structure of the U.N. is so complicated, and there are so many different pieces, paid for under different budgets, and by different member States, that it is very, very hard to go to one place and get a single answer. I do believe that Joe Connor, who will be speaking shortly, has done a very good job of trying to bring a rationality to the accounting, to the budgeting system of the organization; but, I must say, a lot of member States do their best to work around that. In fact, I think this one does sometimes as well, and I would say that transparency is not the first characteristic that comes to mind when you think about the budgetary system within the United Nations, or the personnel system, for that matter.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Grams. Senator Grams. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Luck, just a couple of quick questions dealing with the concerns over the creation of the International Criminal Court. It appears unlikely that the Clinton administration will be able to find a way to provide 100 percent protection to U.S. military personnel and thus will not be able to sign on to the court. Are you concerned, however, that the administration will practice benign neglect, or maybe even worse, that it will support Security Council referrals to the court? I was going to address this to Mr. Bolton, but you can speak in his behalf, if you would like. [Laughter.] Mr. Luck. I sort of regret what has happened with the diplomacy and the politics relating to the International Criminal Court, because I think there is a very good, worthy objective there, but I believe somehow the advocates got a little out front of what the politics would bear, and maybe this administration was not quite on top of it as much as it might have been at the beginning. I think there are a lot of protections in the statute, so I am not as worried as some are on this committee about the threat that it would be to American servicemen. There are a lot of remedies in there, but I do feel very awkward about a court that could come into being before the U.S. and even other major powers, in fact, have ratified and become parties to it, that somehow we would have to be living under a system that we had not yet approved of. It would have been better if they had pulled back and slowed up the negotiations until the politics began to catch up with it. We could have used more public debate on it, but I do not think, when you talk about Security Council referrals, that this administration has been in any way naive about it. I believe that they are very realistic about it, but that they got on top of it rather late. I hope that the process can be slowed down enough so that we can begin to catch our breath and begin to build a broader political base for it. Senator Feingold. I would like to also just ask one question dealing with the U.N. and duplications that we have talked about, and the whole purpose of a lot of the reforms of the Helms-Biden bill, but in the introduction to the Secretary General's reform proposal, he stated that the major source of institutional weakness in the United Nations is that certain organizational features have become, and I quote, fragmented, duplicative, and in some areas ineffective, and in some areas superfluous. Which organization's features at the United Nations, or the United Nations, do you believe could be labeled as superfluous?

I am not sure. That is a question of individual member States' and one's judgment. I do agree that some of the economic and social things are not that central, but I am like a typical American. I believe more in the political and security side of the organization. A great deal of member States, however, do put a lot of stock in the economic, social, and development side of the organization, and we have to recognize that this is not our organization. It is an organization of 188 States and they are pulling in somewhat different directions. The main problem is not so much picking one or another piece to eliminate, but rather that the decisionmaking structure, particularly in the General Assembly, could be simplified enormously if you could get rid of a lot of this underbrush that I mentioned before. It would help if you could do more things through smaller coalitions and smaller groups. If there was enough transparency and enough confidence, then more of the member States would allow these smaller groups to work on things. But they feel every time that the U.S. is going to control it, the U.S. is going to dominate it, along with the other major donors, and so they all want to be there, and pretty soon the bodies get bigger and bigger, and it is harder and harder to make choices. Coordination in the system is not improved by our efforts to weaken the center of the United Nations, especially since the U.S. has supported the creation of many, many little pieces. Sometimes we have to get coordination together in Washington as well, so that you do not have different agencies of the U.S. government, different departments, favoring particular aspects of the U.N. system that answer their particular interests, and that includes in economic and social and other areas. If we do not get our act together, we cannot expect the U.N. to get its act together. Senator Grams. Could this be number six I think you mentioned, agenda? Mr. Luck. Yes. To me, it is a never-ending central piece, and Helms-Biden did touch on this. I somewhat regret that Helms-Biden puts our particular national interests, such as reducing our assessment, together with fundamental reforms that you and others have worked on, so much in terms of questions of transparency and accountability and lack of duplication and other things, because they are really two different agendas. One is an agenda that is good for everybody. The other is an agenda that is basically good for us. People forget that there are some things on the accountability side, on sunset provisions and other things in that bill that are extremely valuable, but because they are attached to our unilateral efforts to get our dues down, they tend to dismiss them. Senator Grams. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Mr. Luck, Mr. Bolton understands this, and I would suggest to you that we will leave the record open for Senators present and who are not able to come today to submit questions in writing, and we would appreciate your responding to them in writing. Mr. Luck. I will be happy to. The Chairman. Oh, just a minute. That is my boss back there. He is a good one, too. But -- and I am going to ask unanimous consent at this point that, inasmuch as this is the first meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee outside of Washington, that all the testimony be printed, and if you will respond to questions, and John and of course the Ambassador knows that procedure.

If he is slow, I can write his answers for him. The Chairman. Pardon me? Mr. Luck. If he is slow, I will be happy to write his answers for him. [Laughter.] The Chairman. Now, John.

Mr. Chairman, given the hour and the need to move on -- this has been an excellent presentation by Mr. Bolton and Mr. Luck -- I will put my questions into the record. I thank the chair. The Chairman. All right. This has been an interesting afternoon for me, beginning with the luncheon. We have a third panel. Let me see. I am going to read exactly what was handed me. On the third and final panel, Mr. Connor and Mr. Ruggie will be joined by Ambassador Hays at the table for discussion, and I apologize for the late start. I am trying to keep everything straight here under unusual circumstances. But thank you, sir, for coming. I enjoyed your testimony. Mr. Luck. Thank you. The Chairman. Thank you so much, and is there any further business to come before the committee? Hearing none, this -- what did the Ambassador call it? -- this historic meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee comes to an end, and we stand adjourned.