This is apparently one of Obama’s top priorities.

(CNSNews.com) – The State Department budget request for fiscal year 2013 includes $4.1 billion for contributions to the United Nations and other international bodies. Among the intended recipients is the U.N’s cultural agency, which lost U.S. funding in FY2012 after it became the first U.N. agency to grant full membership to “Palestine.”

The budget request released Monday includes $79 million for the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNESCO’s funding was cut last November in line with U.S. legislation that denies funds to any U.N. body “which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.”

Thomas Nides, the State Department’s deputy secretary for management and resources, told a briefing Monday that President Obama wanted waiver authority that would allow the U.S. to continue supporting UNESCO in the future.

“We have put the money in the budget, realizing that we’re not going to be able to spend the money unless we get the waiver – and we have made it clear to the Congress we’d like a waiver,” he said.

Senior Republicans warned the administration last fall not to look for ways around the law.

“Any effort to walk back U.S. law would send the damaging message that the U.S. will keep paying for U.N. bodies no matter what they do,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said at the time.