UNITED NATIONS, June 7: An unprecedented war of words between the United States and the United Nations over a controversial speech by world body’s deputy secretary-general threatens to undermine the world body reforms and possibly land it in dire straits financially.
US Ambassador John Bolton called the speech by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown a “very, very grave mistake” that could undermine Mr Annan’s own efforts to push through an ambitious agenda of reform at the world body.
He demanded that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan repudiate a speech in which his No. 2 official broke with tradition and accused the United States of undermining the United Nations.
At the noon briefing on Wednesday UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric asserted among barrage of questions that the secretary-general stands behind the speech given by Mr Brown and fully endorses it.”
On Tuesday Mr Brown assailed the United States for withholding support from the United Nations, encouraging its harshest detractors and undermining an institution that he said Washington needed more than it would admit.
“The prevailing practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable,” said Mr Brown. “You will lose the UN one way or another.”
In what is deemed a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington’s tolerance of what he called “too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping.”
Ambassador Bolton told reporters: “I spoke to the secretary-general this morning. I said ‘I’ve known you since 1989 and I’m telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen in that entire time,”
“To have the deputy secretary-general criticise the United States in such a manner can only do grave harm to the United Nations,” Mr Bolton said.
In the speech, delivered on Tuesday, Malloch Brown said that the United States relies on the United Nations as a diplomatic tool but does not defend it before critics at home, a policy he called unsustainable.
He lamented that the good works of the UN are largely lost because “much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.” The speech was delivered at a daylong conference sponsored by two think tanks, the Centre for American Progress and The Century Foundation.
Mr Brown also criticised the developing countries for blocking secretary-general’s reforms proposal saying the current climate, “even relatively modest proposals that in any other organisation would be seen as uncontroversial, such as providing more authority and flexibility for the secretary-general to shift posts and resources to organisational priorities without having to get direct approval from member states, have been fiercely resisted by the G77, the main group of developing countries, on the grounds that this weakens accountability,”.
US officials including Mr Bolton said they were especially upset that Malloch Brown mentioned “Middle America,” which he said was essentially kept ignorant about the UN role in the world.
Mr Bolton said Malloch Brown’s “condescending, patronising tone about the American people” was the worst part about the speech. “Fundamentally and very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, not the American government, by an international civil servant,” Mr Bolton said. “It’s just illegitimate.”
