Until We Pay Up, We'll Just Clam Up

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, June 13, 2007; A19

The United States has long been criticized for being behind in its promised contributions to various international organizations -- including NATO, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organization, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and so on.

Congressional conservatives have long been less than enthusiastic about giving to international organizations. The Bush administration has asked for -- but not always gotten -- enough to cover yearly dues at various agencies. Requests weren't made to clear prior-year shortfalls. Worse yet, the plunging dollar -- these payments are made in local currencies -- has added to the problem.

Total arrears recently stood at around $130 million, by one count, though Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) pushed about $50 million into the supplemental war appropriation a couple of months ago to alleviate the problem at a few organizations -- including NATO. But the international agencies are increasingly anxious and want their money.

What to do? Well, for one thing, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggests, let's not talk about it. Rice apparently had cabled various U.S. missions about the financial problem and the information had gotten out, causing some heartburn. The concern, one State official said: "Why tip your hand when you're negotiating" over payments?

So she followed up with a cable to U.S. officials at the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, among other places, reminding them that the first cable on "the funding shortfall is intended for Mission personnel only and should remain close hold." Meaning, don't tell anyone.

Further, the officials are "requested not to use any of the information in this cable with the international organizations or the public. Mission is further instructed to not mention that the U.S. will go into arrears when discussing U.S. assessments owed to international organizations." Change the subject, talk about the new Nationals stadium or something.

But what if the organizations simply demand to know when the money's coming? Okay, Rice's cable said, if you're "pressed about when the organization can expect payment, the suggested response is" to say that President Bush asked for the money but that it's up to Congress to deal with it.

"If mission is further pressed about when the organization can expect to be paid the balances owed," the cable said, ". . . say there is currently no legislative authorization for additional funding" to pay the balance owed on last year's assessments.

That has the virtue of being true and meaningless, since Congress routinely writes checks without authorization.

Maybe when all else fails, just tell them the checks are in the mail?

Fact Czech

Speaking of Czechs, President Bush's much-praised freedom speech in Prague last week had a number of stirring, memorable lines. One was "The most powerful weapon in the struggle against extremism is not bullets or bombs -- it is the universal appeal of freedom."

Our colleague Robin Wright thought there was something oddly familiar about that notion and the way Bush -- or one of his speechwriters -- turned the phrase.

Ah, yes. Here's John F. Kennedy, speaking on the Senate floor 50 years ago next month: "The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile -- it is man's eternal desire to be free and independent."

Lost in Translation

Meanwhile, however much Bush folks complain about the U.S. press, it's the Japanese press that's been giving them fits of late.

First the Daily Yomiuri on May 20 wrote of a split between Condoleezza Rice and President Bush over Washington's criteria for designating a country a sponsor of terrorism. At a Camp David summit in April, Rice is said to have implied that unless a nation harmed Americans, it would not get the terrorist designation.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly thought this meant that North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens would not count.

Bush, the paper said, contradicted Rice's explication of the policy and backed the Japanese point of view on the matter.

That article sparked a formal diplomatic complaint by the United States about the leaking of private diplomatic chats.

But then, on May 31, the Kyodo News, also reporting on the summit, quoted Bush as saying that Washington had "screwed it up" in handling the situation involving a freeze on North Korean funds in a Macau bank, which derailed an agreement on North Korean nukes.

Register Checks Out

Administration officials can stop defending Larry Register, the non-Arabic-speaking editorial director of U.S.-funded, Arabic-speaking Alhurra Television, who was blasted for, among other things, giving lots of coverage to the Iran-hosted Holocaust-denial conference.

Register quit on Friday, telling the Broadcasting Board of Governors that he had been hit by "smear campaigns" and "unwarranted, unfair . . . attacks, especially those in the Wall Street Journal," that were hurting the station.

Register was replaced by Daniel Nassif, Radio Sawa's managing director and a native Arabic speaker.

Asked Monday about Register's resignation, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that "as far as I can tell, he did the job to the best of his ability. I think everybody should thank him for taking on what was a difficult assignment and to wish him all the best in his future endeavors." Well, there you go.

Gordon Gins Up New Gig

David Gordon, a former academic, House aide, CIA analyst and now vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, is said to be moving to the State Department to head the policy planning shop, replacing Steve Krasner, who recently returned to his professorship at Stanford.

Gordon, a highly regarded, certified deep thinker, had run the CIA's Office of Transnational Issues, which deals with matters such as global energy and economic security and financial issues.

Goodbye, blue Danube; hello, Green Zone.

Keeping Up With . . .

Former State Department deputy spokesman Phil Reeker, who went off to be No. 2 in the embassy in Budapest and is just arrived in the Green Zone in Baghdad, a "must" stop for career foreign service folks who want eventual advancement, to be spokesman for Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Reeker's wife, Solveig, also a foreign service officer, is also working for Crocker.