Expenses At U.N. Balloon 25 Percent

At the same time, the United States has agreed to fund many of Ban's preferred initiatives, as well, including expanding the U.N. peacekeeping and political affairs departments, at a cost of tens of millions. Washington has even contributed to U.N. initiatives it disdains, including the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which the White House has dismissed as soft on despots and biased against Israel.

But the United States has also grown frustrated with Ban's inability to find cost savings. "The special political missions are very important," said a senior U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. "But to date, member states and the U.N. Secretariat itself have not had the political will to prioritize their spending."

Every two years, the secretary general presents the 192-member General Assembly with a budget proposal. The member states traditionally adopt the budget by consensus after making revisions. In response to unforeseen crises, the U.N. membership has previously authorized supplemental funding, but the figures have never approached the sum currently being requested.

In October, Ban told the General Assembly's budget committee that his administrative budget for 2008-2009 represented a modest increase -- half a percentage point -- over the previous budget. "That is not much, considering the demands upon us," he said. But Mark D. Wallace, the U.S. representative to the United Nations for U.N. management and reform, voted against the $4.17 billion budget in December, warning that subsequent supplemental requests would make it "the largest regular budget in the history of the U.N."

The U.N. member states pushed ahead, adopting a budget that excluded nearly $300 million in programs favored by the United States. Those costs are now included in the $1.1 billion U.N. supplemental request.

"This is not the way to do a budget," Khalilzad said.

The U.N. comptroller, Warren Sach of Britain, defended the increases, saying that most of the costs were attributable to reform initiatives approved by Bush and other world leaders and decisions by the U.N. Security Council, where the United States wields veto power. Sach said that more than 10 percent of the supplemental proposal reflected inflation and the costs of running large operations in Europe with a weak U.S. dollar.

"The U.N. Secretariat largely has no control over the level of expenditure requirements," Sach said last month in a confidential memo to Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar.

Takahiro Shinyo, Japan's deputy ambassador, said that his government will press the U.N. budget committee to slash the latest request and, if necessary, delay approval of some programs until the next budget cycle in 2010. "We are not acquiescing; we are not automatically agreeing," he said. "We will be questioning and proposing ideas for reductions."

Some observers predicted that while the final budget may include cost savings, the vast bulk of it will probably sail through. "As a rule of thumb, they usually get about two-thirds of what they want," said Edward Luck, a historian of the United Nations and adviser to Ban. "Major donors are concerned, but at end of the day, they value what the organization does, and they have a lot of their own priorities they are pushing for in the budget."