Abandoned at the UN

United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has good reason to feel hurt. He woke up one morning recently to read that U.S. President bill Clinton has decided he's got to go.

To be sure, the Clinton administration and Mr. Boutros-Ghali worked together on some major initiatives: A foreign policy of "assertive multilateralism" was a Clintonite idea, and no one pushed it harder than the secretary-general. Unfortunately their joint efforts turned out to be fiascos, such as Somalia and most of Bosnia. with the U.S. presidential campaign under way, the Clintonites are now trying to distance themselves from past mistakes by throwing Mr. Boutros-Ghali off the train.

The secretary-general, of course, wasn't a Clinton administration creation. When it comes to UN reform, George Bush did one great thing, organizing the repeal of the "Zionism is Racism" resolution: He also do one bad thing; falling asleep at the wheel while a team of regionalist interests put through Mr. Boutros-Ghali's appointment and gave the world a secretary- general with a lot of interest in quixotic projects such as saving the continent of Africa through police work.

In his first years at the UN, Mr. Boutros-Ghali developed a habit of pressuring Western nations to favor a habit of pressuring western nations to favor various projects (Somalia) and of using moral intimidation via charges of ethnocentrism, bigotry or worse. As Mr. boutros-Ghali recently put it to German readers: "Every UN Secretary-General has received two terms. Should I--the first African-- not get a second?"

As unpleasant and more dangerous was the secretary-general's powermongering. In Europe, he repeatedly stuck his iron in the bonfires of Yugoslavia, rejecting ceasefire resolutions here and slowing enforcement actions there.

All these preoccupations distracted BBG from a project that actually would be realizable; reforming the world's worst bureaucracy. One of the more memorable outrages was the US$150,000 June 12 junket, for UN officials and other members of the multilateral mafia to Papua New Guinea.

All that said, Mr. Boutros-Ghali does have cause to feel the Clintonites have pushed him out. But if he has been paying attention to U.S. politics the past three years, he'd know that candidate Clinton would separate himself from anyone or anything resembling a re-election liability no matter what past ties.

-- Asian Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong