
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 7: Six countries, including India and Pakistan, have been elected to the United Nations budgetary committee, while the United States was defeated on account of its failure to pay its arrears to the world body.
Other countries elected yesterday to the committee — which makes recommendations to the General Assembly — are Britain, Costa Rica, Japan and Italy.
The US failed to pay up US $1.3 billion to the UN, diplomats said. A vexed European Union did not vote for the United States, they added.
India’s Rajat Saha and outgoing Pakistani ambassador Ahmad Kamal were elected to the budgetary committee for a three-year term beginning January 1.
Saha got 113 votes, while Kamal got 127 in the voting conducted yesterday. American candidate Susan Shearouse could muster only 55 of the 173 valid votes.