The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, has urged the US to pay the arrears it owes the UN, which is "under-resourced" for the job it has to do. She said her commission and other UN agencies found it "very frustrating" to be deprived of the funding needed for their tasks.
The failure of the US to pay its arrears, estimated at up to $1.7 billion, was also damaging for the role the US needed to play as the world's only superpower. Its influence and authority in the UN was being eroded by its failure to pay its dues, and "very poor countries are making increasingly overt criticism of this," Mrs Robinson told a press conference.
She is in Washington to receive the Fulbright Prize for International Understanding today at the State Department. She said she would be raising the arrears issue at the ceremony.
On the question of East Timor, Mrs Robinson said that she has been asked by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, to set up an international commission of inquiry into possible violations of human rights before and after the recent referendum on independence. It was too soon to say whether a war crimes tribunal would be set up.
She said she was also concerned about the threat to stability in Indonesia in the lead-up to the presidential election later this month.
AFP reports:
The Security Council yesterday began discussing a draft resolution enabling the UN to take over the administration of East Timor and prepare it for independence. The report, officially presented by the head of peacekeeping operations, Mr Bernard Miyet, was prepared by Mr Annan.
The peacekeeping force in East Timor yesterday took control of towns in the Maliana and Suai areas, near the border with Indonesian-controlled West Timor, where they came under attack this week from anti-independence militias.