Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Chairman, from a distance, the United Nations headquarters gleams, its signature glass tower dominating the East River skyline of Midtown Manhattan. But a closer look reveals evidence of decades of neglect. Sandbags and tar paper dot the roof to plug leaks. The Under Secretary-General for Management's office shows signs of water damage. Asbestos hangs from ceilings. The buildings furniture and fixtures clearly date from the early 1960s.
The crumbling infrastructure of the headquarters is a metaphor for the state of the United Nations itself. Conceived in the waning days of World War II, the U.N. is a mid-20th century institution in a 21st-century world. While the U.N. was designed to prevent war between nations, it has been called upon with increasing frequency to stop intrastate conflict and solve the challenges of failed states and terrorism. In this new undertaking, the U.N.'s performance has been unremarkable.
In early March, I visited the United Nations and met with members of the U.S. mission and high-level officials of the Secretariat to discuss the ongoing reform of the world body and to assess the state of the relationship between the U.S. and the U.N. I came away impressed with the urgent need for reforms that I hope will lead to a more effective United Nations.
We need to strengthen the U.N.'s capacity to quickly and effectively deploy peacekeepers to halt and prevent genocides and other forms of intrastate and ethnic violence that have become prevalent in the post-Cold War period.
We need to end the obscene irony of having Libya and Sudan sit in judgment of human rights practices of others. We need to stop member states of the U.N. from dominating the agenda with innumerable attacks on our democratic ally Israel as a means of deflecting attention from the appalling lack of economic opportunity and political freedom in many parts of the world.
As by far the largest contributor in the U.N., this country has a huge stake in the success of these reform efforts. But even as we work to correct the U.N.'s problems, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the U.N. serves so many of our national security interests. U.N. peacekeepers instead of American troops are stationed in numerous hot spots around the globe from Haiti to the Middle East to the Congo. The U.N. helped structure and manage the recent Iraqi elections that were an important milestone.
The U.N. has coordinated the global response for Asian tsunami relief for nearly 6 months. It played a vital role in Afghanistan's transformation from a medieval theocracy to a nascent democracy. And the U.N. has also been a key player in the creation of the nation of East Timor.
U.N. experts have been instrumental in coordinating international efforts to fight diseases that in this age of jet travel move across borders and between continents easily and often with devastating results. These are significant contributions to America's national security, and we cannot discount their importance.
We must push the U.N. to change, but I have deep misgivings about the legislation introduced by my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde). And as an aside, Mr. Chairman, we use the word ``distinguished'' here very readily, perfunctorily. It is an honorific. It is occasionally a soporific. But in the case of our chairman, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), I mean the word in all its sincerity. I think there is no chairman and indeed no ranking member held in higher regard by the members of the committee than our chairman, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), and our ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos).
Mr. Chairman, I feel honored to serve in the same Congress with the chairman.
I believe the bill that we are considering today is too focused on unilaterally punishing the U.N. rather than using our prestige and diplomatic leverage to achieve reforms. If the idea is to use reform as a way to strengthen the U.N., I do not believe this is the right approach.
My misgivings are shared by the administration and by a bipartisan group of former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. including Richard Holbrooke, Tom Pickering, and Jeane Kirkpatrick. Yesterday, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said the bill would undermine the credibility of the U.S. at the U.N.
I will be supporting the substitute, Mr. Chairman, authored by our ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos).
In conclusion, I believe the substitute is a sensible and tough approach that will help us push a reform agenda and give us the flexibility to choose not to use punitive measures our Secretary deems it is in the national interest.