THE U.N.'S MIDLIFE CRISIS

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Visiting San Francisco to observe the 50th anniversary of the United Nations at its birthplace, President Clinton criticized its bureacracy and drift even as he defended the organization from House Speaker Newt Gingrich and others in Congress who want to slash U.S. funding and support of peacekeeping operations. "Over the years it has grown too bloated," Clinton said, addressing delegates from 185 nations in the War Memorial Opera House where President Truman addressed the original framers of the charter 50 years ago. "We must consider major structural changes. The United Nations simply does not need a separate agency with its own acronym, stationery and bureaucracy for every problem." That said, Clinton defended the organization against congressional critics. "Turning our backs on the U.N. is no solution. It would be shortsighted and self-destructive," Clinton said. "We reject the siren song of the new isolationists." Bosnia, the open wound of U.N. failure, received only a passing reference to U.N. work "in the Balkans to isolate aggressors."