My recent trip to Baghdad was such an occasion. But we have been there all along. As President Clinton has stated on numerous occasions unarmed United Nations inspectors have destroyed more weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during the last six years than Operation Desert Storm did. United Nations Security Council resolutions have kept sanctions in place. And when the international community determined that diplomacy in Iraq deserved one last chance, the eyes of the world instinctively turned to the United Nations.
Institutional reforms are more difficult to portray to the public than crisis management.
Nearly 1,000 posts have been cut outright, bringing the staff size below 9,000, and other jobs are being held vacant. Administrative expenditures are being cut to 25 percent of the budget, from 38 percent. Our leadership and management structure has been tightened, making it more coherent and more responsive to the needs of the world. And the General Assembly is debating my recommendations for streamlined legislative processes, sunset provisions for new mandates and a new efficiency-inducing budgetary system. Of course, people are more important than organizational structure.