The UN General Assembly on Saturday approved a two-year UN budget of 4.17 billion U.S. dollars despite the only rejection from the United States.
The budget, proposed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was approved by a vote of 142 to one.
Ban welcomed the approval and also expressed his regret that the budget was not adopted by consensus, marking a break with tradition after 20 years, the UN spokesman's office said in a statement.
The Secretary-General urges all member states to return to consensus decision-making and to demonstrate a greater sense of flexibility and compromise, beyond individual national interests and in common cause of multilateralism for the good of humankind.
The U.S. negative vote was due to a special fund of 6.7 million dollars in the budget for a follow-up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism.
The U.S. and Israel delegations withdrew from the third World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, protesting critics during the conference on Israel for alleged racist acts.
Developing countries insisted that the 6.7 million dollars be funded from the regular UN budget rather than by voluntary contributions.
Discussions on the budgets lasted for weeks due to the U.S. objections. Ban's proposed budget was 4.2 billion dollars, the amount that represents real growth of 23 million dollars, or half a percentage point, over the previous budget period of 2006 and 2007.
"That is not much, considering the demands upon us," Ban said earlier, citing "difficult diplomatic and security challenges in Lebanon, Somalia, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo" and "longer term challenges" of fighting poverty, climate change and HIV/AIDS as well as protecting human rights.
"Never has the world so needed a strong United Nations. Yet never have our resources been stretched so thin," he said.
Separately, the assembly also approved 1.28 billion dollars to fund a 26-strong peacekeeping troops of UN-African Union for Sudan's war-torn Darfur region until next June 30.
Another 182.44 million dollar has been approved for a UN force to be deployed in Chad and the Central African Republic.
The United States is the world body's largest contributor, covering around 22 percent of the regular budget.
The United Nations receives its annual funding from its 192 member states which make contributions in accordance with their respective assessed ability.
Source: Xinhua
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