NEW YORK -- The United Nations is torn apart by internal tensions. No sooner was the controversy over the creation of a Human Rights Council resolved than a new battle erupted. The United States is pressing for administrative reforms and threatening to cut off funding if the reforms are not forthcoming. The secretary general has submitted a reasonable reform plan, but a majority of U.N. member states, acting together as the so-called Group of 77, are balking because they regard it as another step in reducing the authority of the General Assembly relative to the Security Council.

In particular, they object to the plan's proposal to give increased powers and responsibilities to the secretary general, whose selection is effectively in the hands of the Security Council's five permanent members, which wield veto power.

Many U.N. members, believing that power within the U.N. has been shifting from the General Assembly, resist giving up what they regard as its last vestige: control over the budget through the work of the Assembly's Fifth Committee. In practice, the Fifth Committee has exercised the kind of micro-management over personnel and expenditure that ought to be exercised by the secretary general if the U.N. is to operate effectively and to have a staff that is up to the challenges facing the organization.