He's caught in crossfire at home. Now Senate Foreign Relations staff is diligently wading through all the records he produced. Nor is resentment of the U.N. the issue, although it is all too often a bastion of appeasement and anti-U.S. sentiment. Secretary General Kofi Annan has cut his payroll and is carrying out many of the reforms he promised the Foreign Relations chairman, Jesse Helms, who proposes to cut the U.S. share of the U.N. upkeep from 25 percent to 20.
Abortion is the sticking point.
Holbrooke is this year's symbol of their grudge fight. Two years ago, Helms and the ranking Democrat, Joe Biden, hammered out a compromise to pay our back dues provided the U.N. cleaned up its act. But Representative Chris Smith attached a rider in the House including the Reagan-Bush order prohibiting U.S. funding of all organizations that perform abortions abroad, an order that Clinton had revoked soon after his election. Facing a certain veto, Helms and Biden worked out with Speaker Gingrich a milder substitute, stopping taxpayer subsidies only to organizations that lobby governments to change abortion laws. But in the Year of Monica, feminists' silence was more important to Clinton than any agreement to break our U.N. impasse.