Paper Torch

Suspicious fires at UNESCO

If timing is truly everything, a series of fires at the Paris headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) last week was right on schedule. Relations between the U.N. agency and the U.S. have deteriorated steadily over what the U.S. has felt to be a consistent anti-Western bias on UNESCO's part. Citing waste, mismanagement and abuse of UNESCO's $374.4 million budget, 25% of which the U.S. provides, President Reagan announced in December that the U.S. would pull out of the agency by the end of this year unless UNESCO's performance changed substantially. To help make a final determination, Congress asked a team of investigators from the General Accounting Office to examine UNESCO's internal operations.

The first blaze started in the archives area of the concrete-and-glass building and spread quickly through dozens of offices on seven floors, destroying tons of documents and causing some $640 million in damage. Even as it was being brought under control, several smaller fires broke out in other parts of the building. Those blazes were contained, and there were no injuries. After determining that large quantities of a flammable liquid had been splashed on walls throughout the building and finding several unused crude paper torches, investigators quickly blamed the fires on arsonists. UNESCO Director-General Amadou Mahtar M'Bow of Senegal called for a full investigation of what he termed "a criminal act." Said he: "I am asking everyone to do all they can so that we can find out the reasons for the fire and the identities of the person or persons at the root of this."

Although the authorities had no firm leads, suspicion spread just as quickly as the blazes. Many UNESCO staff members thought that someone inside the organization had hoped to destroy potentially embarrassing documents. Precisely what sort of records was hard to say, given the long list of complaints against the agency. Many Western nations have strenuously objected to its politicization under M'Bow. In 1975 Soviet bloc and Third World nations provoked a walkout by the U.S., Israel and ten other Western nations when they voted to equate Zionism with racism. The same majority has been trying to use UNESCO to muzzle the press through proposed programs such as the licensing of reporters and the establishing of a code of conduct for journalists. Western nations have also accused UNESCO's bloated bureaucracy of preferring the comforts and generous tax-free salaries of Paris to the rigors of the underdeveloped nations they profess to serve.

Yet if last week's fires were designed to eliminate troublesome records, the arsonists apparently failed. According to UNESCO officials, most documents of interest to the GAO investigators and to a separate team of British auditors who were to do a routine check of the agency's books were stored in areas untouched by the flames. Moreover, copies of documents that were destroyed are readily available in departmental offices.