The head of the World Health Organization fears the U.N. agency will be doomed if the Palestine Liberation Organization succeeds in gaining admission as a sovereign state.
In that event, the United States will end its financial contributions to the agency, which amounts to 25 percent of the WHO’s budget.
The consequences for the WHO of a U.S. pullout from the agency would be “a plague worse than AIDS,” Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, the WHO’s director general, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview here Thursday.
The vote on the PLO’s application for membership will come up during the WHO’s annual General Assembly, which opens in Geneva on May 7.
It was only by very difficult maneuvering that the issue was avoided at the last General Assembly in May 1989. The delegates voted by secret ballot to defer the PLO’s application for one year. The U.S. Congress voted to withdraw U.S. funding if the PLO is granted membership.
“If the PLO succeeds, we might have to close our headquarters in Geneva, many people will lose their jobs and health services will be cut drastically,” said Nakajima, who is a Japanese physician.
He pointed out that Palestinians caught in the intifada would be among those who suffer, because they can’t afford health insurance and are clients of the WHO.
But Nakajima said he had no success trying to explain the situation to the PLO’s allies.
“I told the Arab health ministers I met two weeks ago in Cairo what the results may be, and they are aware of the consequences,” the WHO director said.
“But they do not take into consideration the financial state. Only the political decision interests them.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
