United Nations

A historic United Nations conference to create a permanent international criminal court threatened to fracture into warring camps Monday, with the United States pursuing a hard-line bargaining position that has alienated most of its closest allies.

Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, on Friday protested Iran's execution of a member of the Bahai faith and urged Tehran not to execute three other Bahais who are sentenced to death. She said she was "gravely concerned about the reported conditions that led to the execution, particularly the seeming absence of due process," according to a statement released in New York and Geneva. U.S. officials had issued similar protests Thursday.

At the close of 1997 the United States owed the United Nations $1.3 billion in back dues and unpaid assessments for peacekeeping missions. By the end of this year that debt will grow by $400 million. That the world's richest nation is unwilling--though certainly not unable--to meet its obligations is a national embarrassment and an international political liability that undercuts American influence. U.S. officials who recently sought to rally support among skeptical U.N.

Holding pictures of their dead children, American families of those killed in the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, said they, not Libya's leaders, were the real victims. They spoke in favor of keeping sanctions on Libya before filing into the U.N. Security Council to hear a debate organized by Libya and its Arab and African backers in an effort to get U.N. embargoes lifted.

The Iraqi government has arrested a key figure in the development of its biological weapons, depriving U.N. investigators of a potentially valuable source of information on Baghdad's germ warfare program, officials said Tuesday. Nasser Hindawi, described by U.N.

Remember media magnate Ted Turner's stunning pledge in September to lay a billion-dollar donation on the U.N. over the next 10 years? Nobody around the U.N. has forgotten. Not a dollar has changed hands yet, but there are dozens of spending requests piling up here. According to Joseph Connor, undersecretary-general for administration, they range in price from a few hundred thousand dollars to $40 million.

Not since the 1930s, when Congress passed neutrality acts while Europe and Asia were girding for World War II, has Capitol Hill been so insular in its outlook toward the world. By being hyper-responsive to advocacy groups at home, members of Congress are becoming tone deaf to the requirements of global leadership. If current trends continue, there will not be enough legislators with the expertise, temperament and vision to permit the United States to play a constructive role in world affairs.

In the latest standoff with Iraq, President Clinton has been compelled by events to pursue a strategy offering no appealing options and numerous opportunities to fail. Whichever way he chooses to go, there is no assurance that the United States will succeed in advancing the fundamental objective of its Iraq policy for the last seven years: preventing President Saddam Hussein from developing new weapons of mass destruction.

The United Nations weather agency said Monday that an extreme weather pattern known as La Nina is likely to intensify around the world in the coming months. La Nina, Spanish for little girl, had been in the shadow of her more famous brother, El Nino, for much of this year as the latter, caused by a warming of the Pacific Ocean, brought record droughts and rains worldwide and destroyed crops.

After an all-night session culminating two weeks of sometimes contentious and bureaucratic talks, negotiators from more than 170 nations attending a conference on global warming here wrapped up the event Saturday with the expected result: modest progress.