US State Department Ring-Fences UNESCO Funds

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George Russell ('Four months after de-funding UNESCO, State Department wants to put the money back', Fox News, February 16, 2012) reports that the US State Department, although it pulled funding to the organization just a few months ago, has set aside $79 million in its 2013 budget to fund UNESCO, in the hope that Congress will grant a legal waiver allowing UNESCO funding to be restored. The UNESCO funding was cut off under 1990s U.S. legislation - in the US view that anything giving the Palestinian Authority a boost in status would work against the peace process rather than for it - mandating a spending freeze for any grant of 'premature' full membership to Palestine by a U.N. agency before an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. The Palestinians were granted membership by the democratic will of the international community and the American law envisages using funding cuts as a big stick to impose its own will on the rest of us. Obviously the State department recognizes that this does not exactly give out the best possible message about US foreign policy and commitment to education, culture and science.