Palestine emerges as sticking point in spending bill negotiations
House lawmakers are dead set against a Senate proposal to partially finance UNESCO since it recognized Palestine.
WASHINGTON — Support for Palestine at the UN has emerged as a behind-the-scenes stumbling block as House and Senate spending bill negotiators hurtle toward a Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government.
At issue is a $700,000 subsidy for UNESCO's World Heritage program that's included in the bill that Senate appropriators passed in June. House members say the proposal violates a decades-old law that prohibits funds for any organization that recognizes Palestine as a state and have promised to block it.
UNESCO (the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) ran afoul of the law in 2011 when it added Palestine as a member, prompting the Obama administration to suspend US contributions that had covered 22% of UNESCO's budget. The arrears caused the US to lose its voting rights last year, and the administration and Senate Democrats have sought to get Congress to change the law.
"The administration and some of its congressional allies have been attempting to circumvent and undermine this decades-old law," House Foreign Affairs Middle East panel Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said on the House floor this week. "As we continue to work to put together funding measures that take us past the impending fiscal deadline, I will oppose and fight all efforts to insert language into bills that would restore even a portion of funding to UNESCO or give the president authority to waive this provision of the law."
