Lost in Washington? The Disappearing Director-General of UNESCO

The Rosett Report » Lost in Washington? The Disappearing Director-General of UNESCO

By Claudia Rosett On December 14, 2012

I know, I know — the news of the hour is UN Ambassador Susan Rice. But there’s plenty of interesting commentary right now about Rice (including her own Op-ed in the The Washington Post, where, under the headline “Why I Was Right to Withdraw,” she argues that it shouldn’t be about her). Let us move for a moment to one of the sideshows, where a small mystery all its own is taking shape — involving Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

UNESCO has been in an odd spot since its member states, in gleeful defiance of the official U.S. position, voted last year to admit the Palestinian Authority to full membership. This act, with which UNESCO greatly exceeded its brief as a UN agency by trying to unilaterally confer statehood on the Palestinians, resulted in UNESCO losing its U.S. funding, which was running about $78 million per year, or more than 22% of UNESCO’s core budget. The funding cut was not the preferred tactic of the Obama administration, which would like to continue bankrolling UNESCO regardless. Rather, the block of U.S. government money is required by U.S. laws, which forbid contributing to any part of the UN that tries to confer statehood on any group not fully equipped with the attributes of a state.

The head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, didn’t mind UNESCO admitting the Palestinians, but she was not at all pleased to have UNESCO lose more than $78 million per year in U.S. lucre. So, like many people who want money from Washington, she has been making more trips to Washington than one might otherwise suppose necessary. She has also dispatched an American UNESCO staffer, George Papagiannis, a former congressional aide to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, to serve as her liaison in Washington (well, officially he’s based in New York, but Washington is where he keeps turning up). UNESCO’s basic approach is that UNESCO wants American taxpayers’ money; but UNESCO is not about to reverse its admission of the Palestinian Authority. UNESCO would prefer to see America reverse its own laws. Will there perhaps be a waiver authority for President Obama slipped into some big spending bill? More on how this is now playing out in my column today at National Review Online on “Game Plan for the UNESCO Shakedown.” ...

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