WASHINGTON -- U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, in his sharpest attack on the Republican "contract with America," said Thursday that proposed Republican restrictions on U.S. contributions to the United Nations would destroy UN peacekeeping operations and hamstring American policy.


Christopher told the House International Relations Committee, which was planning to start voting on the bill Friday, that the measure would leave President Bill Clinton and future chief executives with the Hobson's choice of "acting alone or doing nothing when emergencies occur."


The legislation would deduct the costs of voluntary U.S. action supporting UN operations from Washington's $1 billion annual share of the United Nations' $3.6 billion peacekeeping budget.


It also would restrict placing U.S. troops under foreign commanders.


The United States is currently spending about $1.2 billion a year on such activities, which means the legislation would wipe out the entire American contribution to the regular peacekeeping budget.


Voluntary activities are primarily operations like the one that restored President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti and the enforcement of the "no-fly zone" over northern Iraq. Although authorized by the UN Security Council, they are essentially American initiatives.


"Under the current circumstances, such a proposal, if enacted in law, would threaten to end UN peacekeeping overnight," Christopher said. "It would almost certainly lead our allies in NATO and Japan to follow suit, for they also make voluntary contributions of considerable magnitude."


Christopher said the legislation threatens regular UN peacekeeping in such trouble spots as the Golan Heights, the Iraq-Kuwait border, Cyprus, Georgia and Lebanon. Simply forgoing voluntary deployments is no answer, he added, because over the years these have included operations authorized by the United Nations but sponsored by the United States, such as the Persian Gulf War and the Korean War.


Christopher's comments drew a partisan response from the committee. Democrats endorsed the administration's apocalyptic interpretation while Republicans insisted that their objective was not to destroy the UN, just to reduce the cost to the United States.


"It seems to me that the current arrangement is not fair to the American people and it infringes upon the constitutional prerogatives of the Congress, the appropriation process," said Republican Representative Doug Bereuter of Nebraska. "I understand you'd rather have the status quo, but the status quo is not acceptable to the American people and to the Congress."


Christopher agreed that the U.S. share is too large, but he said UN budget-makers have already cut Washington's assessment from 31.7 percent to 25 percent, effective next October.