The mess at the UN

The United States has done its reputation for honorable dealing in international diplomacy no favors by the shabby way it vetoed Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali's reappointment as head of the United Nations.

Being the organization's most influential member, it has a duty to guide it through turbulent patches.

But it has shown sullen disrespect by tossing the UN into administrative limbo and for spurious reasons, which is damnable.

This paper holds no brief for Dr. Boutros-Ghali. He has not been the master conciliator in resolving or preventing world disputes that some of his most avid supporters like France paint him out to be.

He is no great slayer of bureaucracy either.

But he has certainly not been as inept, as the U.S. insists, in cutting out waste in the UN's scandalously overmanned headquarters and its specialized agencies.

The simple fact of the matter was that the U.S. got personal with Dr. Boutros-Ghali because he was an impediment in the Clinton White House's relations with the Republican-controlled Congress.

Mr. Clinton needs to butter up the opposition to get important legislative proposals through, but the UN happens to be high on the Republican hate list for its assumed failures and alleged usurpation of American moral authority in putting out fires in trouble spots.

This is the real reason for American opposition.

The declared position that it wanted Dr. Boutros-Ghali replaced for his failings in reforming the UN to be more responsive to crisis situations and to check profligacy is a flimsy excuse.

The U.S. cannot be certain that a new man or woman would be more effective.

All of that renders the action distasteful for sacrificing an international civil servant, who had been appointed by close to 200 countries, to the dictates of one country's peculiar politics.

America rules the roost -- period. It will almost certainly get its way, in spite of an imprecise guideline in voting procedures under which the General Assembly can, by a simple majority, override the Security Council.

The Americans have no candidate of their own; France has, in any case, warned it would veto it if there was one. It is a mess.

-- The Straits Times, Singapore