[An Nahar] "We were to have made a 60 million dollar payment to UNESCO in November and we will not be making that payment," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told news hounds.Nuland said the Paleostinian admission "triggers longstanding (U.S.) legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO."
The United States, Israel's top ally, in the 1990s banned the financing of any U.N. organization that accepts Paleostine as a full member. The United States provides about 22 percent of the UNESCO annual budget.
The November payment amounts to a tranche of what U.S. officials say is a total annual U.S. contribution of $80 million to the U.N. organization.
Nuland echoed earlier remarks by the White House which said UNESCO's admission of the Paleostinians as a full member was "premature" and undermined international peace efforts and hopes of direct talks on a Paleostinian state.
She said the United States is aware its own interests could be undermined by its withholding funding to UNESCO.
"Under UNESCO's constitution, a member state will have no vote in the general conference if it gets more than two years in arrears in its contribution. So our actual arrearage status will begin in January," she said.
"We now need to have consultations with Congress," she said.
"Not paying our dues into these organizations could severely restrict and reduce our ability to influence them, our ability to act within them, and we think this affects U.S. interests," Nuland said.
"So we need to have conversations with Congress about what options might be available to protect our interests," she said, declining to elaborate.
She conceded that one option would be to gain some sort of flexibility where Washington can still fund UNESCO.
Nuland said the United States is also concerned it could lose influence with other U.N. organizations if the Paleostinians are admitted to them as a full member and Washington is automatically forced to withhold funds.