Deputy secretary-general Mark
Malloch Brown said the US needs
to tell its people why the UN matters
Picture: AFP/Getty
Posted on 06/09/2006 12:21:46 AM PDT by familyop
Deputy secretary-general Mark
Malloch Brown said the US needs
to tell its people why the UN matters
Picture: AFP/Getty
THE United Nations' British second-in-command was at the centre of a furious diplomatic row with the United States yesterday.
The UN deputy secretary-general, Mark Malloch Brown, antagonised Washington after suggesting that the US administration was happy to use the UN as a diplomatic tool while failing to defend it from critics at home.
Mr Malloch Brown told a conference in New York that "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 is simply not sustainable. You will lose the UN one way or another."
Washington, he said, was too happy to tolerate "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping".
His comments provoked a furious response from John Bolten, the pugnacious American ambassador to the UN. "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," said Mr Bolten.
Mr Malloch Brown told reporters after his speech. "You [the US] have to engage to help make this institution a better institution. And you need to engage, if I dare say so, with your own public opinion to explain better why the UN matters to American interests."
He argued that good news about the UN rarely reached the US. "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 UN's role is in effect a secret in middle America even as it is highlighted in the Middle East and other parts of the world," he said.
A recent Gallup poll reported that 64 per cent of Americans had a poor opinion of the United Nations and the organisation is frequently and routinely portrayed as an anti-American body that coddles and makes excuses for dictatorial regimes around the world while proving itself unable to live up to the lofty goals it sets itself. Sex scandals involving UN peacekeepers, the corrupt administration of the UN's oil-for-food programme in Iraq and the organisation's reluctance to support the US-British invasion of Iraq have all fed American dissatisfaction with the UN.
"Americans complain about the UN's bureaucracy, weak decision-making, the lack of accountable modern management structures and the political divisions of the general assembly here in New York," acknowledged Mr Malloch Brown. "And my response is, 'guilty on all counts'."
However, he said he UN could only change and reform its practices if the US were committed to the organisation. "In the eyes of the rest of the world, US commitment tends to ebb much more than it flows. And in recent years, the enormously divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to define an unhappy marriage."
Tensions between Washington and the UN will come to a head later this month when its budget runs out. Washington, by far the biggest financial contributor to the UN, has insisted that it implement reforms before the US will agree to fund a new budget.
Mr Malloch Brown's "condescending, patronising tone about the American people" was the worst part about the speech said Mr Bolton.
"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.
"When a member of the [UN] secretariat criticises ... the intelligence of the people of a member government, that's a very questionable activity. Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations."
He called on Mr Annan to "personally and publicly" repudiate his deputy's speech. But Mr Annan's spokesman said the secretary-general stood by Mr Malloch Brown's comments.
Mr Malloch Brown's speech was delivered at a conference sponsored by two think tanks, the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation.
LOL not bad for a colonial
How do we start the process of revoking Diplomatic immunity?
I've had enough...Get out! Get out and take all of Ali Babba's thieves with you. Turn that prime real estate into condo's.
Don't give those bastards a dime of my tax money.
Pompous jackass...
Perhaps this Brit twit doesn't know that the Middle American knows too much about the outlaws in the UN....about the parody it has become when it seats Saudi Arabia and Libya on the Human Rights Commission, when it shovels our tax dollars into Sadaam's pockets all those years while Iraq's starving children fronted for the "Oil for Food" rip-off. No, thanks to Rush and Fox, we know way too much about this vile cluster of crooks from all over the world. We consider it a waste of money, a place where inferior nations poke a ridiculously long-suffering USA in the nose while we feed their citizens because their governments are too evil and stupid to manage workable countries. Get the US out of the UN! It should have been done back in the '80s when the great Ronald Reagan was President.
Notice the WORD "reluctance."
This is typical spin, the UN refused outright to enforce its mandate and rules against Iran, with France , Germany and Russia in opposition, fueling an Oil for food ( actually oil for WMD which were hastily removed, where did the latest generation of French surface to air missles found at Bagdad International come from?)scandal, ALL WITH THE DESIGN TO WEAKEN THE US DOLLAR AND GIVE UNTIMELY STRENGTH TO THE EURO. So we "reluctantly" invaded Iraq.
Never has a president of the US been more right.The USA is hauling ash for Europe, and actually protecting it from a social devolution towards Muslim rule.
The UN needs to be shut down in NYC and extridited to the Hague. The sooner the better. Then we should run a couple of passenger aircraft into it's buildings as part of the demolition process.
"Anyone in Middle America willing to lend the UN a vacant barn for its new HQ?"
Move the UN HQ to any country other that the US and then quit the UN.
well said; there appears to be a lot of people willing to shoot their mouths off without thinking.
UN OUT OF US... US OUT OF UN... NOW!
LLS
Both "think tanks" are joined at the hip to Soros.
Funny. I thought that was the UN Mission Statement.
Herrnstein & Murray (The Bell Curve) meet affirmative action.
GET US OUT OF UN
GET UN OUT OF US
Though a vacant barn would really be too good for them, I don't think there will be any takers. Who would want that band of international thieves to come live in their town?
Remember when the cafeteria workers in the UN building went on strike and walked off the job? Those "highly paid, highly respected" (I just threw up in my mouth) people of the UN world body swarmed over that place like a plague of locusts. When they were done, there wasn't anything edible left, and some of those pieces of international crap even took the silverware, glasses and trays.
It should shock people, but considering who works there it was just business as usual, but the crime was on a smaller scale.
Huh? They live the high life, at our, and Japan's expense. (I don't remember any other double digit contributors)
Didn't they wait to help the tsunami victims until a 5-star hotel was cleaned up? Meanwhile, Australia got an airfield
restore, and the US and Japan were right behind...
Hey Tony. I hate Brit lefties (like this scum) equally as much as American lefties. IF we were both like these eunuchs back in WWII, I would be typing this in German. (Or I might be a Shade on a frilly lamp.)
Oh yeah, my family is from Appalachia. I'll be damned but we all have English ancestry (With some Scott-Irish thrown in there).
Come on now, the new STOL aircraft aren't quite that good. Maybe a helicopter carrier? That and we don't need anything but our horses and six guns to take over the world! /joke
On a more serious note, how does England look for the World Cup?
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