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AFP
NEW YORK
THE UNITED STATES warned on Wednesday that it would use its presidency of the UN Security Council to review the performance of peacekeeping missions worldwide.
The council is due to vote in the next few days on whether to extend or to cut back the 19,000-strong UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
And US President Donald Trump made it clear in his first budget request to Congress that he hopes to cut America's funding to the United Nations.
US ambassador Nikki Haley will become president of the council for the month of April, and she made it plain that peacekeeping will be under the microscope.
"I came to the UN with the goal of showing the American people value for their investment in this institution,"she told the Council on Foreign Relations.
Haley insisted that Washington's aim was to make the missions more effective and with a clear exit strategy, not only to save money.
But she was clear that the US share of the $7.9 billion UN peacekeeping budget would have to fall from 29 to at most 25 percent.
"The US is the moral conscience of the world,"she said.
"We will not walk away from this role, but we will insist that our participation in the UN will honor and respect this role."
Haley said she had already begun work with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to identify ways to streamline UN military commitments.
"We're going to wind down the peacekeeping mission in Haiti, it's not needed anymore,"she said. Guterres has proposed ending this mission by October.
"We're going to wind down in the Ivory Coast. We're going to wind it down in Liberia. But guess what? We're going to work harder on those areas that truly don't have peace."
But the next mission to be reviewed will be the biggest, that in the DRC. A vote on renewing its mandate had been due Wednesday, but has been put back.
