U.S. LOSES SEAT ON U.N. NARCOTICS CONTROL BOARD

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - In another embarrassing debacle at the
United Nations, the United States was voted off the International
Narcotics Control Board, a move the State Department on Monday called
regrettable.

The vote by secret ballot, not announced at the time, occurred last
Thursday in the U.N. Economic and Social Council. The body's 54
members on the same day threw the United States off the U.N.
Commission for Human Rights, the top U.N. rights group, based in Geneva.

One Western envoy speculated that the U.S. lost both back to back
votes for the same reason. Europeans, who pay their bills to the world
body on time, voted and campaigned for their EU colleagues, with
France, Austria and the Netherlands edging out the U.S. candidate,
Herbert Okun.

Peru, India, Brazil and Iran also won seats.

Okun had been a respected member for 10 years on the board, which
monitors compliance with U.N. treaties on substance abuse and drug
trafficking.

Disappointed, Okun said he considered the job an honor but did not
speculate on the vote. Members receive some $3,000 a year as an honorarium.

``In order to serve you have to be completely impartial and
disinterested. and serve in your personal capacity, not that of your
government,'' he told Reuters.

A former ambassador to the now-defunct East Germany and a deputy
ambassador at the United Nations, Okun, 70, assisted former Secretary
of State Cyrus Vance in trying to devise a U.N. peace formula for
Bosnia in the early 1990s.

He then moved to other diplomatic ventures for the United Nations
related to the Balkans.

Expressing his regrets at Okun's loss, State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher, said, ``Well, there's something happening out there.
I'm not sure I want to give too much meat to the various arguments
that have been advanced for what it is.''

But he said ``I think it's fair to speculate there may be issues
related to how we handled ourselves, to how we pushed very hard for
human rights.''

The board monitors and enforces three treaties: one in 1961 on
narcotics control, a second in 1971 on psychotropic and synthetic
substances and a third one adopted in 1988 on drug trafficking and
money laundering. It also reports on the status of legal drugs.

For example, Okun, in presenting the board's report at a New York news
conference in February, warned that legal drugs like Viagra, steroids
and diet pills were being consumed in worrying excess in rich
countries, such as the United States.

The most common speculation at the U.S. loss among U.N. diplomats was
lack of lobbying. Frequently delegates do not check with their home
governments before casting a vote.

Envoys said James Cunningham, the U.S. chief of mission, could only do
so much, in light of vacancies throughout the American delegation
after Clinton appointees had left.

The Bush administration two months ago had announced the appointment
of veteran diplomat John Negroponte as U.N. ambassador but has yet to
send his name to Congress.

But other envoys said the main problem was that members were exhausted
by heavy U.S. lobbying for posts or positions as conducted by former
U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, especially on getting U.S. dues
reduced.

In the end, one envoy noted, the United States had not paid a dime of
its promised monies to ameliorate the debt to the United Nations.
``And the Europeans have to pick up the bill,'' the diplomat added.