Posted on 06/10/2006 12:37:20 AM PDT by MadIvan
It was probably inevitable that the simmering tensions between the United Nations and America would eventually boil over in public.
But no one thought that the buttoned-up world of international diplomacy would produce the very public slanging match now taking place between Mark Malloch Brown, the British Deputy UN Secretary-General, and John Bolton, the Bush Administration's arch hawk and ambassador to the UN.
The trouble started when Mr Malloch Brown told a group of prominent Democrats - including Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's former secretary of state - that the Administration was guilty of allowing "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping".
The fact that Mr Malloch Brown felt obliged to vent his frustrations smacks of desperation.
Both he and his boss, Kofi Annan, are under intense pressure from America to come up with workable propositions for the organisation's long-overdue overhaul. Quite apart from the appalling corruption scandals relating to the oil-for-food programme in Iraq, the UN's current structure is widely regarded as being ineffective in dealing with the innumerable threats posed to international security.
Mr Bolton was a senior State Department official in the build-up to the Iraq war and witnessed first-hand the UN's futility. Since his appointment last year, he has been in the vanguard of demands that the organisation undergo wholesale and radical reform. As America pays a hefty 22 per cent of the UN's annual budget, the Bush Administration feels it is quite within its rights to demand value for money.
Mr Malloch Brown's injudicious remarks have caused the worst crisis in relations between America and the UN since the invasion of Iraq, with Mr Bolton threatening to withhold America's budget contribution unless he receives an apology. It will come through gritted teeth, but Mr Malloch Brown should now make amends by giving Mr Bolton what he wants.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
The UN is a totalitarian government without a country of its own to ruin--eh, to rule.
Move the UN out of the US...I recommend Southern Sudan as a new location.
What did Malloch Brown think the administration should do- duct-tape Midwesterners' lips together?
Regards, Ivan
Many of the news sources on the internet (especially nonAmerican ones and CBS) are downright slamming Bolton, the United States, or both on this argument. The United States should withdraw from the United Nations and the institution's main headquarters can go to Geneva. What is Middle America anyway, a pejorative expression for American rustics? The United Nations, for the most part, has neither helped the United States nor the world.
How come Southern Sudan (though that could start some investment and development, sort of how the European Union has made Brussels more of a prominent city)?
Mr. Malloch-Brown obviously had talking points planted by someone: he went after Fox News and mispronounced "Rush Limbaugh".
Rush had a lot of fun with it, anyway. No worries.
The UN neeeds to be made accountable.
I hope the money is withheld.. the UN is past its prime.. it has become a tool of de-evolution for humanity.. UN is indirectly.. and sometimes directly responsible for some of the worst atrocities commited against humanity. If it cannot govern itself then it is not worthy of anything. We should just let it wither away
Now if we just have the nads to do it...
perhaps the UN could summer in its refugee camps in Gaza and see what destruction they hath wrought there as well.
Propsed new United Nations building.
LOL...beautiful!
The nifty part is that when I was looking for a picture of a mud hut for the New UN building, that one happened to be an outhouse!
He gave something to Anon (mispelling intended) I don't know that it was his brain cells.
"that the Administration was guilty of allowing "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping".
Ha, I guess they expose themselves what their idea of government is. They would DISALLOW FREE SPEECH!
What a jack ass!
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