The UN Budget

Here we go again:

The Bush administration moved on Wednesday to confront the Republican leadership in the House by opposing a bill that would withhold half the American dues to the United Nations unless it enacted several budget and management changes.

In a separate development, the administration signaled a shift in its opposition to a broad expansion of the United Nations Security Council, saying it was willing to add two permanent members to the council, one of them Japan. An administration official indicated that the other should come from the developing world.

State Department officials formally conveyed the administration’s opposition to withholding dues to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, one day ahead of a scheduled House vote on the measure, which is popular among conservatives. The bill, backed by the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, is considered likely to pass but its prospects are less certain in the Senate in light of outright administration opposition.

The administration had previously indicated only its uneasiness with the bill’s position on withholding dues, which total about $400 million a year, hoping to get the provision quietly deleted.

In an interview, R. Nicholas Burns under secretary of state for political affairs, said: “We are the founder of the U.N. We’re the host country of the U.N. We’re the leading contributor to the U.N. We don’t want to put ourselves in a position where the United States is withholding 50 percent of the American contributions to the U.N. system.”

Ahh, the annual UN ritual.