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U.S. Senator Jesse Helms At The UN

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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SEN. JESSE HELMS, CHMN., U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS CMTE.: You're just a trouble maker, aren't you? (INAUDIBLE). Well, why don't you report what went on today?

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RICHARD ROTH, DIPLOMATIC LICENSE: Trouble? Why that's the middle name of this program, DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. Hello, I'm Richard Roth.

That gentleman standing in front of the UN Security Council this week accusing a journalist of causing trouble is one of the most influential senators in the United States, Jesse Helms. Many countries at the UN would say Helms has caused them nothing but trouble.

The senator from North Carolina has been a fierce critic of the United Nations in recent years, demanding structural changes before the United States pays its dues on time.

(voice-over): Imagine the spectacle as Senator Helms came to the United Nations this week, and instead of locking the doors, the UN welcomed their guest as if he was a long-lost uncle. Uncle Sam, you might say, since the United Nations realizes that if Helms is angry, a peacekeeping mission may not get funded or a human rights team doesn't get funded. A new U.S. budget on the UN co-authored by Helms says the UN gets its money only if Washington gets to pay less to the global group.

(on camera): It's the way it is. The U.S. is the heavyweight at the UN, and Helms and the Security Council went toe-to-toe in a heavyweight debate of sorts. First, the money issue. Helms lumped together a variety of U.S. payments and told the council the American people have contributed over $10 billion last year to the UN.

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HELMS: So you can see perhaps why many Americans reject the suggestion that their country is a deadbeat nation. And frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I resent it, too.

SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN AMB. TO UN (through translator): The members of the United Nations expect from one another, and particularly from the United States, and that is a certain restraint, and what we expect is an ability that the other side will keep their word.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK, BRITISH AMB. TO UN: The United Nations is not a separate organ to which we turn, like a fire (ph) service, it is the member states. And the United States, as the single superpower, owns 25 percent of the power and the resources of the United Nations. What it does well, the U.S. gets credit for. What it does badly, the U.S. must bear some responsibility for.

HELMS: Congress has written a check to the United Nations for $926 million payable upon the implementation of previously agreed upon common-sense reforms. Now the choice is up to you here at the United Nations, and I suggest that if the United Nations were to reject this compromise, it would mark the beginning of the end for U.S. support for the United Nations.

PETER VAN WALSUM, DUTCH AMB. TO UN: It is a nightmare to envisage a United Nations without the United States. And against this background, we are always prepared to make a supreme effort to accommodate the United States in its relationship with the United Nations. But this will not prevent us from stating that a member state cannot attach conditions to its willingness to pay its assessed contributions to the organization.

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ROTH: Talking point two - Helms never mentioned black helicopters, but another major theme of the council showdown was Helms' fear of UN global domination over sovereign nations, the United States.

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HELMS: The United Nations must respect national sovereignty in the United States and everywhere else. The United Nations serves nation states, not the other way around.

QIN HUASAN, CHINESE AMB. TO UN (through translator): It is only if the UN acts according to the spirit of the charter and respects some basic principles therein that is respect for sovereignty, complete equality among big and small countries and non-interference in internal affairs.

HELMS: The American people have a long history of coming to the aid of those struggling for freedom. In the United States during the 1980s, we called this the Reagan doctrine.

MARTIN ANDJABA, NAMIBIAN AMB. TO UN: The Reagan doctrine in our part of the world, where we come from, is not one or the one that we cherish very much. But it was during the Reagan administration that my own country, Namibia, did not get independence at a time that we needed it very much.

HELMS: The United Nations seeks to impose its presumed authority on the American people without their consent begs for confrontation and, I want to be candid with you, eventual U.S. withdrawal.

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ROTH: It was stunning theater. With seats on the aisle, Afsane Bassir Pour - critic, Le Monde. And at our backstage area inside the UN, James Bone from the Times of London. Afsane, what do you think of Helms' performance and the UN reception?

AFSANE BASSIR POUR, LE MONDE: Well, it was high drama, as you mentioned. But you know, once you've heard his speech, you realize that, in fact, this man's quarrel with the UN - and he's made a career of it - has nothing to do with money and everything to do with his philosophy, political philosophy of the world.

You've heard him say very, very clearly. He said, "We will hold the money as hostage until you do what we want you to do." For example, he says that if the U.S. wants to use force unilaterally, it does not need to ask permission. Whereas you remember in Kosovo, NATO used force. But then everybody came back and said, well, this was the last time. This was an exception. We won't do it again. But this is what Helms wants. He wants no.

ROTH: All right. James Bone, your take?

JAMES BONE, TIMES OF LONDON: Well, I actually disagree somewhat with Afsane. I think Helms, who sometimes is a little difficult to understand, presented a fairly cogent case, as he had earlier done in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine. And one of the things he said is about which Afsane refers to about the UN not having the - not being the only source of legitimacy for the use of force is actually the case these days.

I mean, both in the British-American bombing of Iraq and in the assault on Kosovo, the UN did not approve the use of force, and yet it went through. And when Russia tried to get the UN Security Council to condemn the use of force in Kosovo, the Security Council said, no, that that wasn't the case.

ROTH: You're saying there's nothing changed. But what about the fact that he went face to face, he told them after years of the council reading his comments and hearing Washington views perhaps second-hand from ambassadors, does it make a difference?

POUR: Yes, of course, I thought it was a very useful exercise, actually. You know, he got to say what he came to say, and that was no surprise. But then the members of the council all of them - all 14 of them - told him that you cannot attach conditions to payment. You have to pay.

BONE: But there are two.

POUR: So it was interesting. And also the fact that he comes to the UN, for Christ's sake, you know, just as I said, as a man who's made a career out of UN bashing, and he's here at the UN. It's just direct contact. It's very interesting.

BONE: But there are two options for the.

ROTH: That ambassador's sake. I didn't catch that name on the ambassador. Go ahead, James.

BONE: There are two options for the UN. One is to compromise with Helms and redesign the UN and accept the U.S. conditions. And the other is not to compromise with Helms and force the U.S. out of the United Nations, as Helms delivered that warning very clearly. I mean, it was Boutros Boutros-Ghali who said that reforming the United Nations was a bit like fixing an automobile while it was still driving along.

POUR: But James, it's not as if Helms is going to be there forever.

BONE: That's the.

POUR: I mean, he's a 78-year-old man, for God's sake. The UN doesn't have to do either of those things.

ROTH: Hey, hold - that sounds like our New Year's predictions on who survives. Let's hold off on that.

POUR: No, I didn't say he was going to die.

ROTH: Helms said that he was offering his hand in friendship to the UN Security Council, and he tried to use some of his down-home charm on the worldly bunch surrounding him, who also could give as good as they got.

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HELMS: It's not my intent to offend you in any way, and I hope I will not. I trust you will forgive me if I come across a little bit more blunt than you are accustomed to hearing in this chamber. Thank you for putting up with a fellow who came here to speak candidly and honestly with you. Now you come to Washington, and let's talk further about it.

GREENSTOCK: I sincerely hope that we can begin to discuss these things in greater depth, that we will continue these conversations, and I warmly appreciate your initiative in getting the series going. Thank you.

LAVROV (through translator): It has been very pleasant for me to meet personally with Senator Helms and to exchange a few words with him before this meeting. It turned out that I was, in fact, earlier in North Carolina.

AGAM HASMY, MALAYSIAN AMB. TO UN: Consider your invitation for further dialogue an interesting one to have already opted to go up to Washington, I will have to consider and seek the approval of my government that it is appropriate for us to do so. Personally, I would have no problem.

HELMS: As some of you may have detected already, I do not have a Yankee accent.

(LAUGHTER)

I hope you have a translator here who can speak southern, someone who can translate words like "y'all" and "I do declare."

ALAIN DEJAMMET, FRENCH AMB. TO UN (through translator): Your warm accent from the South was entirely understood by our interpreters. I would like to say that we did hear you, but the idea in this house is that others must be heard.

LAVROV (through translator): My Russian also has a southern accent, and I thought I'd point that out.

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ROTH: If the Security Council could bring 15 members to the table, then Senator Helms could also add to his entourage.

(voice-over): On Friday, for a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee leader made an unprecedented visit to UN headquarters with his entire committee. UN and Senate officials described the session as warm and surprisingly quick and substantive.

And one UN senator made clear, unlike Senator Jesse Helms, that not all Americans fear United Nations domination.

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SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN, (D) U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS CMTE.: The idea that U.S. sovereignty is in any way jeopardized by the United Nations I think is balderdash. I think is crazy. I think it has no relevance to reality, and I don't think the American people think that. There's a thing called a veto. There isn't any - if any country doesn't have to worry about their sovereignty in this outfit, it's the United States of America.

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ROTH: James Bone, what's your take on the Friday development? There was a lunch. There was also a hearing held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the UN off UN property.

BONE: Well, Richard, that meeting between Senator Helms and his fellow congressmen or senators and Kofi Annan was described by the spokesmen as downright convivial.

Good to remember that Kofi Annan, the secretary-general, has himself made a great attempt to court Helms and one of his first trips when he took over as secretary was to go down to Washington and meet Helms. So they've had the good sense to develop a good personal relationship.

POUR: Talking about Washington, I don't think this initiative of Ambassador Holbrooke went down very well in Washington. Some people - there's already grumbling there. Some people think that they elevated him too much because he came to the Security Council and spoke on behalf of the American people, as Senator Biden pointed out.

ROTH: All right. We'll be back with more with Afsane and James. There were handshakes and smiles, a lot of talk of understanding. After hours of listening to the Security Council, Senator Helms emerged.

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REPORTER: Was there anything that you heard, experienced here today that has changed your mind about the United Nations in any way?

HELMS: Not really.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Great hat, by the way. Great hat.

NELSON MANDELA, BURUNDI MEDIATOR: Thank you.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, U.S. AMB. TO UN: Where did you get this fantastic hat?

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ROTH: Hats off, as they say in parts of the world, to Nelson Mandela as the statesman came to the UN a day ahead of Jesse Helms, but on a completely different topic.

Mandela, who spurred revolutionary change in South Africa, has a new mission on the continent. He is an international mediator for the Central African nation of Burundi.

(voice-over): .where ethnic conflict has killed more than 200,000 people. The former South African president said this is not just a local problem in Burundi which the world can ignore.

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NELSON MANDELA, BURUNDIAN MEDIATOR: Peace in Burundi will give hope for the democratic Republic of Congo and other countries in the region. And it will prove an effective example of African intervention in an African problem.

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ROTH (on camera): Burundi, we've talked about it over the last six years. The Hutu, the majority population, are in the minority to a Tutsi government since 1962. Afsane, will Nelson Mandela be able to make a difference after speaking to the council?

POUR: Well, if Nelson Mandela can't make a difference, I don't see who can. What's very interesting about these open meetings is that it permits the world to shame the guilty government in which case it is the government of Burundi. They have this reprehensible policy of what they call in French "haute gaut moi (ph)." Of putting a bunch of Hutus, you know, people that they think are troublemakers into camps to which there is no humanitarian access. And the idea was to shame them into opening, disbanding these camps.

ROTH: The Burundi foreign minister says people like you who make those charges are spreading disinformation and propaganda. Burundi closed 10 camps or at least 50 camps with more than 300,00 people in them.

POUR: But Mandela scolded them. I mean, it's not just.

ROTH: The UN interagency task force also condemned the camps. James, on Burundi?

BONE: This kind of forced village-ization is common in guerrilla warfare. It's not a very attractive feature of these type of rebel wars, but it's very common in many parts of the world. Nelson Mandela is trying to put together a peace conference in Arusha, Tanzania, next month in February and tried to get Bill Clinton to go there. Bill Clinton has already said he won't be going there.

The French Jacques Chirac is invited, but the French say they want to expand the conference into something on the whole Great Lakes region. And even Kofi Annan is a doubtful for that because he might be in East Timor at that time.

ROTH: All right.

BONE: Traveling there. So it's not clear if Nelson Mandela is going to deliver this big-bang conference that he's looking for.

ROTH: All right. We've had Nelson Mandela. We've had Jesse Helms. We've had Al Gore inside the UN Security Council. Next month - next week, actually, we're going to have Congo discussed, and some influential heads of state from Africa regions. James, what can we expect, and what is the heart of the issue regarding the Congo conflict?

BONE: Well, the heart of the issue is to get the peace accord back on track and everyone respecting a guidelines for the implementation of the peace accord. Kofi Annan has proposed sending 5,000 or 5,500 UN troops to protect 500 military observers who are meant to be there observing the cease-fire.

I'm not clear whether he's going to get U.S. backing for that. That was raised in one of the discussions with the U.S. senators as a problem. But there is the ambitious proposal, and Richard Holbrooke's hoping to put Congo back on track really.

POUR: This is the most difficult part of the month of Africa because on Burundi, you had Nelson Mandela. We have Angola. This is really the most difficult part because there are so many countries involved in this war. Now that the president of Congo, Kabila - Laurent Kabila is coming, it will make it a little bit easier once again to shame the governments into doing something in these open meetings.

But the difficulty is that the rebels who are fighting the government of Congo have not been invited, and that, of course, makes it very difficult to even arrive at any kind of an agreement.

BONE: Although, Afsane, one hears the Americans are trying to get rebel representatives to be around in the margins so they can be consulted informally during these - this week of talks that's coming up.

ROTH: And for our viewers, all of these African countries have these spillover issues where it would take weeks to decipher a map where Rwanda is blamed for being in different countries. All of these countries are so intertwined with the rebels and refugees spreading across borders.

POUR: Eight countries already in the Congo. You know, I mean, that fighting each other, it's just an amazing war.

BONE: But some people speak about the world war of Africa. The Congo conflict drawing everybody in and becoming the world war of Africa. So that's why the UN is so concerned about it. It's an enormous country, of course.

ROTH: All right. James, I want to move on to another African country which had its own day during Africa month at the Security Council, the day devoted to Angola. The Canadian ambassador on the Security Council, Robert Fowler returned from a trip to Angola, and it was no vacation.

But he brought back some home movies which no one should turn away from. Fowler was investigating diamond smuggling which fuels the UNITA rebels struggle with government forces. The UN accuses UNITA of breaking the peace accord which brought a brief moment of hope to Angola in the 30 years of war that has wrecked the country.

But Fowler also interviewed UNITA defectors who said they were given orders to shoot down planes, including two UN jets with a loss of 23 lives.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Well, what happened was that we had instructions to bring down any type of aircraft that was flying within range of our anti-aircraft guns.

QUESTIONER: Including United Nations aircraft?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Everything that was aircraft. Because (INAUDIBLE) said that the UN aircraft was in the service of the government.

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ROTH: Now, the UNITA faction denies this. It says the defectors were just trying to impress their Angolan host. Fowler says the people he interviewed seemed to be talking under no duress. Afsane?

POUR: Well, you know, what's very interesting about the defectors and what they said about the planes is that there is no reaction from the UN. You remember when these planes were shot down, some investigation started. But the UN has been so muted on this.

ROTH: Well, they said they didn't even know how to - what legal recourse or what they were going to do.

POUR: I mean, you would think that with this kind of allegations at least, they would follow the lead and try to find out who shot down their plane and why and what to do about it. But it's been so muted that one wonders if there's not something going on there. I was very surprised that the UN didn't react.

ROTH: OK. All right. When the lights came on after Canada's Angola video concluded, council president and Golden Globes voter Richard Holbrooke had the first night review.

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HOLBROOKE: Thank you, Ambassador Fowler, for that Academy Award winning movie and your excellent report. I congratulate you on your difficult mission and on laying the basis for the reports to come in the future which will be of such immense importance.

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HOLBROOKE: This issue will have to get resolved, but I'm not going to say how or when.

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ROTH: The council president and U.S. ambassador is referring to the big question of who will be the next chief arms inspector for Iraq?

(voice-over): The secretary-general submitted the name of Rolf Ekeus, the first lead investigator. After weeks of council discussions and 25 names, including Ekeus, produced nothing. China, Russia, France have problems with Ekeus.

(on camera): Afsane, who is it going to be?

POUR: Oh, I have no idea. But you know, the only people who are really interested for this commission actually to work, I think, are Britain and France. Basically, Russia and China seem to have decided that this could drag on for months because why should they impose inspectors on Iraq when they're not sure that the U.S. actually wants to lift or even suspend the sanctions.

The U.S., on the - for its part, is not in a hurry to get inspectors back there because U.S. thinks that any commission that really functions will eventually lead to the lifting of sanctions. Now they don't want that, and of course, Iraq is very happy without a commission so.

ROTH: James Bone?

BONE: I don't think Kofi Annan ever expected Rolf Ekeus to be accepted. I think he was just drawing venom from the French, Russians and Chinese so that there might be some daylight open for a second proposal.

My tip, Richard, will be to continue to watch Pasi Patokallio, Finnish disarmament expert now serving as Finland's ambassador to Israel. I think he probably will be the front-runner for the second time around.

ROTH: OK.

POUR: I'll venture Hans Blix (ph), the Swede.

ROTH: All right. Well, I think his name is shorter. I might like it as a broadcaster. Afsane and James, thank you. We're out of time. Next week, the Congo puzzle comes to the UN.

I'm Richard Roth in New York. Thanks for watching.

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