Helms lashes out during speech at U.N.

Senator warns U.S. could exit organization.

By MAGGIE FARLEY

The Los Angeles Times

UNITED NATIONS --- Sen. Jesse Helms, one of the United Nations' severest critics, told the Security Council exactly what he thought of the United Nations and its place in the world in a speech Thursday that he admitted wasn't in "the elegant and rarefied language of the diplomatic trade."

The North Carolina Republican, who has called the U.N. community "dysfunctional" and "crybabies" in the past, said he came to extend a "hand of friendship." But that genial gesture quickly turned to finger-pointing as he launched into an extended criticism of the organization.

Helms declared the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia- Herzegovina "a disaster," efforts to disarm Iraq "a failure" and warned the United States would withdraw from the body if it didn't serve America's interests well.

Helms is the first U.S. senator ever to address the 15-member council, a meeting arranged by U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to repair rocky U.S.-U.N. relations. After years of refusing to pay its U.N. dues in an effort to force reform, Congress late last year allocated $926 million of the $1.6 billion the United Nations says it is owed.

Helms sought to sweeten his speech with a little North Carolina charm, joking, "I hope you have a translator here who can speak Southern." But the message was clear: that he regards the United Nations as a tool to serve U.S. interests, not the other way around.

Sitting at the head of a horseshoe-shaped table in the Security Council chamber, Helms said he resents the United States being labeled a "deadbeat" nation. Washington may have withheld its dues, Helms said, but in 1999 alone, the United States contributed more than $10 billion in military and other support of U.N. operations and peacekeeping efforts around the world.

"Now, I grant you, the money we spend on the U.N. is not charity," he said. "To the contrary, it is an investment --- an investment from which the American people rightly expect a return. They expect a reformed U.N. that works more efficiently and which respects the sovereignty of the United States of America."

As ambassadors from around the world watched with faces fixed in diplomatic inscrutability, Helms emphasized the United Nations --- "some of whose members are totalitarian dictatorships" --- has no power over American national interests.

"A United Nations that seeks to impose its presumed authority on the American people without their consent begs for confrontation and, I want to be candid with you, eventual U.S. withdrawal."

Today, across the street from the United Nations, Helms will chair the first session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be held outside Washington, with the topic being U.N. reform.

Helms reminded the Security Council the world body must meet two dozen conditions created by Congress in order to receive the remainder of U.S. arrears during the next two years, including a reduction of the U.S. share of the U.N. budget to 20 percent from 25 percent. The conditions are part of legislation crafted by Helms and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., to enable payment of the arrears.

Many U.N. members criticize the stringent unilateral demands as arrogant and unfair. Dutch Ambassador Arnold Peter van Walsum said, "It is a nightmare to envisage the U.N. without the U.S.," but he warned a member state can't attach conditions to its membership dues.

British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock stressed the United States helped design the rules of the world body and supplies a quarter of its resources and power, so it also must share the credit and the blame for its successes and failures.

"The U.N. is a great democracy," he said. "We do things democratically here."

When the mutual lecturing was over, Helms was asked if he learned anything from his session in the heart of the organization he has criticized for so long.

"Not really," he said before walking away.

Sen. Jesse Helms

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