§ 5. Ms Julia Drown (South Swindon)If he will make a statement about arrangements for financing the United Nations. [69424]
§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tony Lloyd)We continue to promote the European Union's proposals for reform of the arrangements for financing the United Nations, which are designed to reflect more closely countries' capacity to pay. We believe that the proposals represent the best way of resolving the current crisis in funding. At the end of 1998, the United Nations was owed over $2 billion by member states. We urge all United Nations member states to pay their dues promptly, in full and without conditions, as the United Kingdom does.
§ Ms DrownI thank my hon. Friend for that reply, although I am concerned at its content. Over the past decade, 2 million children have been killed in war, and many more have been left disabled and homeless. The world looks to the United Nations to help to solve the conflicts that result in those deaths. How can the United Nations function without the funds that it requires to do its work? Will my hon. Friend make urgent representations to the right-wing Republicans on Capitol hill, and make it clear that they are acting irresponsibly and that children's lives depend on their agreeing to pay their dues without further delay?
§ Mr. LloydMy hon. Friend is absolutely right. The simple reality is that a United Nations that is owed $2 billion is not in a proper position to do all the work that we ask of it. We want a more efficient United Nations, but we do not necessarily want a cheapskate United Nations that cannot do the job that the world wants it to do. That is why we as a Government are the biggest single funder of, for example, the UN Commission on Human Rights. Now that President Clinton is firmly back in the saddle, it is incumbent on the United States Congress to accept that it must pay the United Nations what it owes.
§ Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex)hi view of the American Government's lamentable record on the funding of the United Nations and their persistent default in stumping up what they owe, would the Minister support a proposition that the UN headquarters should move to London, at the very centre of the European Union, removing it from the ambit of the rather more absurd American views on it?
§ Mr. LloydThe hon. Gentleman certainly seems to have created a popular movement among Government Back Benchers; but there is no proper proposal to remove the United Nations from New York. The reality is that 720 both New York as a city and the United States as a country do very well out of the presence of the UN on their territory. That is why we expect Congress to come up with the money that it owes.