In another embarrassing debacle at the United Nations, the United States was voted off the International Narcotics Control Board, a move the State Department on Monday called regrettable.

The vote by secret ballot, not announced at the time, occurred last Thursday in the UN Economic and Social Council. The body's 54 members on the same day threw the United States off the UN Commission for Human Rights, the top UN rights group, based in Geneva.

One Western envoy speculated that the US lost both back to back votes for the same reason. Europeans, who pay their bills to the world body on time, voted and campaigned for their EU colleagues, with France, Austria and the Netherlands edging out the US candidate, Herbert Okun.

Peru, India, Brazil and Iran also won seats.

Okun had been a respected member for 10 years on the board, which monitors compliance with UN treaties on substance abuse and drug trafficking.

Disappointed, Okun said he considered the job an honor but did not speculate on the vote. Members receive some $3,000 a year as an honorarium.

"In order to serve you have to be completely impartial and disinterested. and serve in your personal capacity, not that of your government," he told Reuters.

A former ambassador to the now-defunct East Germany and a deputy ambassador at the United Nations, Okun, 70, assisted former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in trying to devise a UN peace formula for Bosnia in the early 1990s.

He then moved to other diplomatic ventures for the United Nations related to the Balkans.

Expressing his regrets at Okun's loss, US State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher, said, "Well, there's something happening out there. I'm not sure I want to give too much meat to the various arguments that have been advanced for what it is."

But he said "I think it's fair to speculate there may be issues related to how we handled ourselves, to how we pushed very hard for human rights."

The board monitors and enforces three treaties: one in 1961 on narcotics control, a second in 1971 on psychotropic and synthetic substances and a third one adopted in 1988 on drug trafficking and money laundering. It also reports on the status of legal drugs.

For example, Okun, in presenting the board's report at a New York news conference in February, warned that legal drugs like Viagra, steroids and diet pills were being consumed in worrying excess in rich countries, such as the United States.

The most common speculation at the US loss among UN diplomats was lack of lobbying. Frequently delegates do not check with their home governments before casting a vote.

Envoys said James Cunningham, the US chief of mission, could only do so much, in light of vacancies throughout the American delegation after Clinton appointees had left.

The Bush administration two months ago had announced the appointment of veteran diplomat John Negroponte as UN ambassador but has yet to send his name to Congress.

But other envoys said the main problem was that members were exhausted by heavy US lobbying for posts or positions as conducted by former US ambassador Richard Holbrooke, especially on getting US dues reduced.

In the end, one envoy noted, the United States had not paid a dime of its promised monies to ameliorate the debt to the United Nations. "And the Europeans have to pick up the bill," the diplomat added.

(China Daily 05/08/2001)