UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A 3-percent gap in the UN peacekeeping budget as a result of the United States withholding part of its assigned share of payment is unsustainable, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday.
The United States insists on paying no more than 25 percent of the UN peacekeeping budget, instead of the 28 percent assigned to it by the UN General Assembly. The withholding of the funds creates a 3-percent gap in the current overall budget for UN peacekeeping, said Guterres.
The issue turns out to be an extremely tricky one for the United Nations, he told a New Year press conference.
"Now, the problem is that I cannot successfully solve this problem by simply reducing the expenditure by 3 percent," he said.
According to the rules, all member states that contribute to the budget have the right to get their share of the savings, therefore, the saved expenditure has to be given back to the contributing countries, "which makes the situation completely unsustainable," Guterres said.
Until now, the situation has been relatively under control as the gap is being funded by countries contributing troops and police officers.
According to Guterres, most of these countries are of the poorest ones. "So, it's totally unacceptable from the moral point of view and totally unsustainable to keep this situation forever."
