Irish share of UN budget to rise under deal in which US may settle its account

Ireland's contribution to the UN's regular budget will increase by 31 per cent to over $3 million a year under a landmark agreement reached yesterday on member states' contributions which dramatically cuts the disputed share of the US.

Although the final details were still being worked out late last night, the agreement should allow for the US to repay its massive arrears to the organisation and put it back on a sound financial footing.

The deal has been made possible because of a specifically earmarked donation of $35 million to the US by the billionaire, Mr Ted Turner, who has previously pledged up to $1 billion to various UN projects but until now refused to bail out US underpayments.

The $35 million will make up the balance for a year between what the US Congress is willing to pay in dues and arrears and what current US commitments stand at. It has made it possible for the US ambassador to the UN, Mr Richard Holbrooke, to broker a long-term deal which substantially reduces US obligations to the international organisation.

But in a rider to the agreement, insisted on by the EU, a US failure to clear its arrears may prompt a review of the entire settlement. The deadline for a restructuring of assessments, the amount each country must pay to the UN budget, was last night so the UN General Assembly can approve it before the holiday recess.

The US will get its payments for the $1 billion a year regular or administrative UN budget reduced from 25 per cent to 22 per cent of the total. For fluctuating peacekeeping expenses, estimated at $3 billion, US obligations will fall from 30 per cent to 26 or 27 per cent.

Congress had refused to pay most of the $1.5 billion Washington owes to the UN until the rate of US payments was cut. EU member-states will see substantial increases. Ireland's contribution to peacekeeping costs will rise by a similar rate (about 31 per cent) to our increased contribution to the UN budget, to over $6 million a year. The scale of the increases is largely due to the country's prodigious growth and only in small measure to the US reduction. The system sets a 22 per cent ceiling on any one country's contribution to administration.

A settlement to the long-running dispute between the US and the UN, which has significantly reduced the US influence in the organisation, will be particularly welcome to the incoming administration whose Republican supporters, most notably Senator Jesse Helms, have seen the UN as a profligate bureaucracy and worse - some see in it a conspiracy aimed at creating world government. The French ambassador, Mr Jean-David Levitte, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, predicted earlier that hard bargaining would not begin until the 11th hour amid pain, recrimination and screaming. Mr Turner, it seems, has obviated the necessity for screaming.