New Hampshire collects money for US debt at UN

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Concerned at the $1.4 billion American debt to the United Nations, a group of citizens in New Hampshire collected $1,886 in a door-to-door campaign and delivered the money to U.N. officials on Friday.

Helen Drysdale, a 15-year-old sophomore at Hanover High School on the New Hampshire-Vermont border, travelled to New York to make the presentation, saying the initiative first came from the Quaker and Bahai faiths.

``Some people felt it was about time the U.S. paid up some dues. People paid from $2 to $175,'' she told a news conference.

The money, however, cannot be used toward paying off the U.S. arrears, mainly for past peacekeeping expenses. It goes into a special trust fund for humanitarian projects.

The U.S. Congress last year offered to pay close to $1 billion of the debt but attached a rider barring international family planning agencies that receive U.S. aid from lobbying foreign governments to change their abortion laws. President Bill Clinton vetoed the measure.

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