Send the friggin' UN to Haiti and see how many still volunteer to be on the council!
Bolton Calls on Annan to Repudiate Aide's Remarks
nytimes.com
By WARREN HOGE
Published: June 7, 2006
UNITED NATIONS, June 7 — John R. Bolton, the American ambassador to the United Nations, called on Secretary General Kofi Annan today to repudiate "personally and publicly" critical remarks his top official made about the United States, but Mr. Annan turned aside the challenge.
Calling the matter "very, very grave," Mr. Bolton said he made the demand in a morning phone call in which he told the secretary general, "I've known you since 1989, and I'm telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior U.N. official that I have seen in that entire time."
The official, Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary general, assailed the United States in a speech Tuesday for withholding support from the United Nations, encouraging its harshest detractors and undermining an institution he said Washington needed more than it would admit.
"The prevailing practice of seeking to use the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable," Mr. Malloch Brown said. "You will lose the U.N. one way or another."
Responding to Mr. Bolton today, Mr. Annan's spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said: "The secretary general stands by the deputy secretary general and agrees with the thrust of the speech. This is not a criticism of the United States, it is call for greater U.S. involvement in the U.N."
The showdown was provoked when Mr. Malloch Brown said in his speech that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of it by Washington's tolerance of what he called "too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping."
It is highly unusual for a United Nations official to single out an individual country for criticism,
"Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News," Mr. Malloch Brown said.
Mr. Bolton said that worse than the criticism of the United States government was what he called Mr. Malloch Brown's "condescending, patronizing tone about the American people. Fundamentally, very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, by an international civil servant, and it's just illegitimate."
"Even though the target of the speech was the United States," he added, "the victim, I feel, will be the United Nations."
The confrontation threw into blunt relief tensions between the United Nations Secretariat and Mr. Bolton, an envoy known for single-minded assertiveness with other ambassadors and disdainful comments about the United Nations and its top officials.
Mr. Malloch Brown did not mention Mr. Bolton by name, but he criticized the working strategy that many diplomats have associated with Mr. Bolton since his arrival last August.
"Exacerbating matters is the widely held perception, even among many U.S. allies, that the U.S. tends to hold on to maximalist positions when it could be finding middle ground," Mr. Malloch Brown said.
A Briton who became deputy secretary general in March, Mr. Malloch Brown will leave office when Mr. Annan's term ends on Dec. 31. He made his remarks in a luncheon speech at a midtown hotel to a conference on global leadership co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation.
The speech reflected frustration in Mr. Annan's office over a looming budget crisis, since the United Nation's bills will be paid only until the end of June.
Under pressure from Washington in December, an agreement was struck to link budget approval with the need to achieve significant management reforms. AndMr. Bolton made frequent mention of Congressional impatience with the United Nations and legislation that would authorize Washington to start withholding its dues. The United States is the largest contributor to the United Nations, paying 22 percent of its budget.
"In recent years, the enormously divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to define an unhappy marriage," Mr. Malloch Brown said.
In an interview today, Mr. Bolton said, "It will be very hard for the Congress of the United States to understand a senior United Nations official attacking the United States government."
In his speech, Mr. Malloch Brown noted that the United Nations fields 18 different peacekeeping operations abroad at lower cost and higher effectiveness than "comparable U.S. operations" yet, he said, that fact was either ignored or underplayed by policy makers and opinion shapers in Washington.
"To acknowledge an America reliant on international institutions is not perceived to be good politics at home," he said.
As examples, Mr. Malloch Brown cited the American unwillingness to join the other 190 nations in backing the plan to renovate the aging and dilapidated headquarters, and the decision to force a vote in March on the new Human Rights Council in which the United States stood virtually alone in opposition.
Mr. Malloch Brown said this approach had left American motives open to question, even among allies, and had crippled Washington's ability to muster backing for its own positions.
"When the U.S. does champion the right issues like management reform, as it is currently doing," he said, "it provokes more suspicion than support." |
