In what threatens to become an annual tradition, United Nations diplomats negotiated into the early hours of Christmas Eve to reach a budget compromise that set the world body’s spending at $700m (€498m, £478m) above the original estimate.
The marathon end-of-year talks again highlighted the problems of meeting the requirements of all 192 members states of the UN General Assembly while reflecting demands, particularly from the developed states that pay the largest contributions, to keep costs down.
