Trump threatens to cut ‘failing UN’ funds
UNITED STATES: Donald Trump’s choice for ambassador to the United Nations threatened to starve the body of funding yesterday as the incoming White House team lashed out at the UN’s treatment of Israel and promised ‘‘a bold new America-first agenda’’ on the world stage.
Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, told a Senate confirmation hearing that the UN was ‘‘often at odds with American national interests and American taxpayers’’.
She added: ‘‘The American people see the UN’s mistreatment of Israel, its failure to prevent the North Korean threat, its waste and corruption and they are fed up.’’
As Trump prepares to take the oath of office tomorrow, his aides said Haley’s testimony was part of an effort to ‘‘turn the page on the failed diplomacy of the past’’.
Haley, the first woman of Indian heritage to be nominated to the cabinet, called America the ‘‘indispensable voice of freedom’’ and was scathing about the UN’s condemnation of Israeli settlements last month.
She would return America to its role over many decades of being Israel’s diplomatic shield at the UN and vetoing resolutions critical of the Jewish state.
‘‘I will not go to New York and abstain when the UN seeks to create an international environment that encourages boycotts of Israel. I will never abstain when the United Nations takes any action that comes in direct conflict with the interests and values of the United States,’’ she said.
Trump will speak about jobs, infrastructure and trade in his inaugural address tomorrow, a speech he says he has written himself. The themes would include ‘‘shared values and where we go as a country’’, an aide said.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution last month declaring that Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory have no legal validity.
It passed only abstained.
The abstention was a parting shot from President Barack Obama at Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, with whom he was at loggerheads for most of his presidency.
Obama made stalling the settlements a major part of his ultimately unsuccessful Middle East peace plans.
The UN vote was delayed for a day after Trump called on Egypt to postpone it.
After the resolution was passed, Trump said on Twitter: ‘‘As to the UN, things will be different after January 20th.’’
The US contributes more than a fifth of the UN’s US$2.5 billion operating budget, sending some US$600 million to New York every year.
‘‘We contribute 22 per cent of the UN’s budget, far more than any after the US other country. We are a generous nation,’’ Haley said yesterday.
‘‘But we must ask ourselves what good is being accomplished by this disproportionate contribution. Are we getting what we pay for?’’
The comments make Haley the latest of Trump’s nominees to express scepticism about the body they have been appointed to.
Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has doubted climate change science. Rick Perry, nominated to lead the energy department, said when he ran for president in 2012 that he wanted to abolish it.
Haley also became the latest of Trump’s foreign policy nominees to break with him over President Vladimir Putin, saying Moscow could not be trusted.
‘‘Russia is trying to show their muscle right now. It’s what they do,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t think that we can trust them.’’
Trump said this week that he would begin by trusting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin equally.
He returned to the theme yesterday, telling the Axios website: ‘‘I give everybody an even start. Right now, as far as I’m concerned, everybody’s got an even start.’’
That would mark a radical shift from the Obama White House.
Speaking in Davos, Joe Biden, the vice-president, warned that ‘‘under President Putin, Russia is working with every tool available to them to whittle away at the edges of the European project, test the faultlines of Western nations and return to a politics defined by spheres of influence’’.
Biden added: ‘‘With many countries in Europe slated to hold elections this year, we should expect further attempts by Russia to meddle in the democratic process. It will occur again, I promise you. And again the purpose is clear: to collapse the liberal international order.’’
The US will allow a delegation from Taiwan to attend Trump’s inauguration, including the former premier Yu Shyikun.
The move, while not unprecedented, promises to aggravate Beijing, which regards Taiwan as Chinese sovereign territory.
Trump said yesterday that overturning Obama’s healthcare reforms would be his top domestic priority. Hours later, however, the congressman he has chosen to lead that effort faced hard questions from a Senate panel on his personal investments.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Tom Price, the nominee for health secretary, had traded more than US$300,000 worth of shares in health-related companies over the past four years while backing legislation that potentially affected those companies.
Price denied yesterday that he had benefited from share tips from a fellow congressman.
Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, raised alarm bells over whether Trump’s national security team would be ready to take control tomorrow.
Delays in obtaining security clearances and the slow pace at which Trump has recruited National Security Council staff members meant that nearly 1000 pages of classified material on North Korea’s nuclear programme, the military campaign against Isis and tensions in the South China Sea may not have been read by the incoming administration. – The Times