UN Budget Deal Said Reached, Numbers Crunched for Committee Vote Before Midnight

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, December 21, 9:55 p.m. -- "Let the numbers crunching begin," a UN budget insider told Inner City Press at 9:20 p.m. in the UN's smoky basement. Deals have been struck, he said. Now there are 45 minutes for the Secretariat to calculate what the deals mean, in dollar terms, and another 40 minutes to try to translate the deal into the UN's six official language. The source indicated that a deal was reached on the Procurement Task Force -- an issue on which the U.S. had threatened to block other aspects of the budget -- as well, apparently, on the so-called Durbin II conference. U.S. representative Bruce Rashkow paced the basement a in disheveled bowtie. Chef de cabinet Vijay Nambiar chatted with Syria's ambassador, who had forwarded to Lebanese journalists drafts concerning the funding of the Larsen office under Security Council Resolution 1559: reportedly, $900,000 a year from the UN, and $36,000 a month from the International Peace Academy.

    Other journalists, mostly from Japan, nosed around into the status of a Myanmar-related item. Whether the budget is, in fact, $4.2 or $4.6 or, as U.S. Ambassador Mark D. Wallace first said, $5.2 billion, remains to be seen. The Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions will have to check and certify the numbers. They put the figure for the contested new UN building in Baghdad at $181 million, and not $180 million. But even ACABQ, as of 9:45, had not yet seen the numbers. Upstairs the crunching could be heard, aiming toward a 10:45 p.m. vote in the Fifth (budget) Committee. Some say even then, it might not pass directly upstairs to the full General Assembly for vote.

UN by day; budget negotiated by night in basement under background glass

   Meanwhile, there were reports of diplomats miffed at their Delegates' Lounge being filled with drinking interns. The Vienna cafe, usually closed at 6, stayed open until 9:30 p.m.. In the basement beers were being drunk, sushi eaten. "Go get dinner," the budget insider said, citing Murphy's Law and projecting broken copies, typos and mistranslations.  We note, not for nothing, that ACABQ this year claims only three corrections, two of which weren't the Committee's fault. Hats off, and let the number crunching continue. Watch this site for more interim updates.

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Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

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