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determination to promote bureaucratic and financial reform of the world organization.20

As former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Charles M. Lichenstein notes,

The so-called arrearages we owe the United Nations did not just mount up

by chance. They reflected the accumulated frustration of Congress with a

UN system that has scoffed at every demand for basic reform, both pro-

grammatic and fiscal, for more than a decade.

In the wake of this foot-dragging, the United Nations has the

temerity to call us deadbeats for refusing to pour more dollars--U.S.

taxpayer dollars, let it be noted, for which we all are owed an accounting--

down a bottomless well.

What's more, the total amount of money the United States has to

pay is determined by the United Nations, not by us. Under archaic assess-

ment schedules (unchanged since 1972) the United States pays 25% of the

UN's administrative budget, currently about $300 million a year, and 31.7%

of the peacekeeping budget, more than $1 billion annually in recent years.21

Senator Helms confirms that money was withheld by Congress for the explicit

purpose of sparking UN reform. He also concluded that the effort failed. In a much

discussed 1996 article in Foreign Affairs, Helms declared the situation so serious that a

threat of American withdrawal from the world body should be considered:

The time has come for the United States to deliver an ultimatum: Either the

United Nations reforms, quickly and dramatically, or the United States will

end its participation. For too long, the Clinton administration has paid lip

service to the idea of U.N. reform, without imposing any real costs for

U.N. failure to do so. I am convinced that without the threat of American

withdrawal, nothing will change. Withholding U.S. contributions has not

worked.22

However, Senator Helms never went the route of advocating withdrawal. Instead,

he introduced and the Senate passed a bill to pay most of the "arrearages" in exchange for

specific United Nations reforms. He explained,

[T]his bill will require the UN to reduce the size of the U.S. contributions

from 25 percent today to 20 percent by the year 2000. . . . It also requires

the UN to adopt a really negative growth budget and eliminate at least one

thousand bureaucratic posts.

This legislation will prohibit U.S. funding of UN global confer-

ences, like the Beijing Women's Summit and the Rio Earth Summit. . . . It