Bolton tangles with Annan deputy over US policy toward UN 
By Gerard Aziakou
June 7, 2006
Yahoo News
Original Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/unreformusbolton

(AFP) US Ambassador John Bolton rebuked a stinging criticism of Washington's policy toward the United Nations by UN chief Kofi Annan's deputy, demanding it be promptly repudiated to avoid doing serious damage to the world body.
Addressing a New York conference on global leadership Tuesday, UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown slammed the prevailing US 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.
He noted that while Washington is constructively engaged with the UN on a host of issues such as Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon or Syria, much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as (conservative radio talk show host) Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
Exacerbating matters is the widely held perception, even among many US allies, that the US tends to hold on to maximalist positions when it could be finding middle ground, Malloch Brown said.
In a furious reaction, Bolton called the speech by Annan's deputy a very grave mistake.
We are in the process of an enormous effort to achieve substantial reform at the United Nations, he said. To have the deputy secretary general criticize the United States in such a manner can only do great harm to the United Nations.
Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations, he added. Even worse was the condescending and patronizing tone about the American people.
Bolton said the only way to mitigate the damage to the United Nations was for Annan to personally and publicly repudiate this speech at the earliest possible opportunity.
Otherwise I fear the consequences not just for the reform effort but for the organization, he added.
Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Annan stands by the statement made by his deputy and he agrees with the thrust of it.
So there is no question of any action being taken against the deputy secretary general, he added.
Malloch Brown's speech should not be interpreted as an anti-US speech and in fact called for greater US involvement in the United Nations and makes clear that the UN cannot work without US engagement and US leadership, Dujarric said.
Malloch Brown, a Briton who took over as deputy secretary general in March and will step down when Annan's term ends on December 31, said his remarks were meant as a sincere and constructive critique of US policy toward the UN by a friend and admirer.
And he deplored the fact that the enormously divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to define an unhappy marriage between the UN and Washington.
The world body faces possible financial gridlock at the end of the month, when a 950-million dollar spending cap on a two-year 3.798 billion-dollar UN budget agreed last December expires, if wealthy and developing countries fail to reach agreement on a package of management reforms proposed by Annan.
The United States has threatened to withdraw funding if the reforms are not adopted by then, and EU countries have said they will have to take another look at their contributions.
Malloch Brown stressed that most developing countries fully backed the principle of a better-run, more effective UN.
But he pointedly added: There is currently a perception among many otherwise quite moderate countries that anything the US supports must have a secret agenda aimed at either subordinating multilateral processes to Washington's ends or weakening the institutions, and therefore, put crudely, should be opposed without any real discussion of whether they make sense or not. 
He also turned the spotlight on what he called the real, understandable hostility by the wider (UN) membership to the perception that the Security Council, in particular the five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States --, is seeking a role in areas not formally within its remit, such as management issues or human rights. 
He spoke of an equally understandable conviction that those five, veto-wielding permanent members who happen to be the victors in a war fought 60 years ago, cannot be seen as representative of today's world.