A clash seems to be shaping up between the Carter Administration and key Senators over U.S. policy towards UNESCO, the United Nations agency that sought to expel Israel and then relented after the U.S. withheld its contributions to it.
In testimony last Thursday before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Aid, Administration officials urged approval of the payment of $67 million to UNESCO which would wipe out all U.S. indebtedness to UNESCO and meet its dues through 1978.
The fact that the officials of the State Department and Treasury submitted their views to an appropriations panel before they did to an authorization group in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee elicited surprise from Capitol sources. The practice is for the authorization to come first since it is then that the policy is formed.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee sources indicated that the committee is prepared to pay one year of U.S. dues in arrears to maintain U.S. voting rights but to go no further inasmuch as UNESCO has continued to charge Israel with violations on the Jerusalem excavations, provided aid to the PLO for what it claims to be a cultural program, while denying participation in UNESCO of a scientist from Taiwan.
The Foreign Relations Committee sources noted that they are approving payment of a year’s dues in view of UNESCO allowing Israel to join the European regional group which UNESCO previously had refused to allow.
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