United Nations Radio

After tough negotiations, the UN General Assembly late on Friday reached a deal for a budget for 2006.

The Assembly adopted a $3.79 billion dollar budget for 2006 and 2007, but the budget limits spending in the first 6 months of next year to $950 million dollars. The Secretary-General welcomed the adoption of the budget, thanking delegations for working on it in a spirit of compromise, saying work on reform of the Organization would continue with increased momentum. The representative of Jamaica, Stafford Neil, as Chair of the Group of 77 developing countries and China, said the Group's disagreement with any individual budget proposals did not at all signal opposition to reform of the UN.

Neil (Jamaica):"The G77 and China are supportive of management reform, we want an efficient Secretariat - it's in the interest of all countries. And we are prepared to work diligently and in good faith in that process. We wouldn't necessarily agree with all the proposals and find unpalatable the fact that there is this axe hanging over our heads in terms of the spending limitation."

The United States representative, John Bolton, offered a contrasting perspective.

Bolton (United States):"We have shown flexibility and restraint in our efforts, but we think we have accomplished what we set out to do, which was to ensure the inextricable linkage of budget and management reform."

General Assembly President Jan Eliasson applauded the adoption of a two-year budget while acknowledging the reservations of some delegations to the spending cap.

Eliasson: "It's a fact of life and I would hope that we will continue our work and do the regular work well and at the same time also continue to modernize and reform the United Nations. We have a tough year ahead of us, we have to deal with the Human Rights Council, we have to deal with issues of terrorism, we have issues related to Security Council reform."

Under the formula reached late on Friday as the Assembly ended its session for the year, the Secretary-General is authorized to spend $950 million on UN business at his discretion for the first half of the year, but will have to request any additional funds.