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Hailed as the cure for ill will toward Washington and other diplomatic problems at the United Nations, the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, was taken down a peg over the weekend, as his own — and his country's — prestige were thrown into question. What will one of President Bush's favorite operators do now? Mr. Khalilzad sold to the 15 members of the Security Council a resolution in support of the Palestinian Arab-Israeli negotiations at Annapolis. But he acted like a star quarterback who botched the signals, ran ahead with the football, got the backs and coaches all confused, and ended...

In February 2006 Mark Malloch Brown, then the UN Secretary General’s chief of staff, was interviewed by Claudia Rosett at the UN, and found himself increasingly furious at the line of questioning about his housing arrangements in New York. Malloch Brown had caused controversy with his decision to live on the smart country estate of George Soros, the financier who forced Britain out of the ERM in 1992, and a major donor to left-wing causes. Finally, the UN mandarin barked that he was doing ‘God’s work’ before storming out of the interview. Malloch Brown might well consider himself to be...

A SENIOR Downing Street aide has sounded out Washington on the possibility of an early British military withdrawal from Iraq. Simon McDonald, the prime minister’s chief foreign policy adviser, left the impression that he was “doing the groundwork” for Gordon Brown, according to one of those he consulted. Brown, who arrives at Camp David in Maryland today to meet President George W Bush, said yesterday that “the relationship with the United States is our single most important bilateral relationship”. Downing Street remains emphatic that he will not unveil a plan to withdraw British troops, who are due to remain in...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

Mark Malloch Brown hadn't even ordered his ermine before he became the most contentious appointment to Gordon Brown's Government of all the talents. While the aid agencies and liberals were still toasting the arrival of "Saint Mark" to Whitehall, the neo-cons on both sides of the Atlantic were throwing darts at photographs of their devil. The former deputy secretary general to the UN divides opinion between those who see him as the great hope for Africa and a principled opponent of the war in Iraq, and those who believe that he is an anti-American egotist who defended Kofi Annan over...

Britain's "special relationship" with the United States is under fresh strain today after Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office minister, said that Gordon Brown and President George W Bush would no longer "be joined at the hip". Lord Malloch Brown: it's time for a more 'impartial' foreign policy Interviewed in The Daily Telegraph, Lord Malloch Brown said that it was time for a more "impartial" foreign policy, building new relationships with the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the German chancellor Angela Merkel as well as the growing economic powerhouses of India and China.

AS America’s ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton was no tame diplomat. Armed with his feared red pen, ready to strike out waffling resolutions, he was an able and aggressive defender of US interests, but he often had to uphold policies with which he was not in tune. “To the great chagrin of many people, I followed my instructions at the UN,” he said in his first newspaper interview since relinquishing his post. He is a free man now and eager to have his say. Bolton engaged in tortuous negotiations over sanctions for Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programmes...

Following unprecedented criticism of U.S. popular and governmental attitudes toward the United Nations, the world organization's second-ranking official ended his June 6 speech in New York with this rhetorical question: ''Who will campaign in 2008 for a new multilateral national security?'' Unbelievably but unmistakably, U.N. Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown was injecting himself into the next American presidential election. ''He was shamelessly pandering to partisan interests,'' Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who has led congressional pressure for U.N. reform, told me. Malloch Brown's remarkable speech was delivered under the auspices of two left-of-center think tanks, one of them with particularly...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Following unprecedented criticism of U.S. popular and governmental attitudes toward the United Nations, the world organization's second-ranking official ended his June 6 speech in New York with this rhetorical question: "Who will campaign in 2008 for a new multilateral national security?" Unbelievably but unmistakably, U.N. Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown was injecting himself into the next American presidential election."He was shamelessly pandering to partisan interests," Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who has led congressional pressure for U.N. reform, told me. Malloch Brown's remarkable speech was delivered under the auspices of two left-of-center think tanks, one of them...

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...

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...

Annan Deputy Goes Ballistic Over Soros ArticleLandlord Soros…[Mediacrity] 6/23/05 Ever wonder why the East River Debating and Terrorist Cheerleading Society gets such indulgent treatment in the media? Here's an example of what happens on the rare occasion when a UN reporter gets tough. Last week, Benny Avni of the New York Sun broke the story of how Kofi Annan's chief of staff Mark Malloch Brown has a stinks-to-high-heaven landlord-tenant arrangement with George Soros. Brown makes $125,000 a year and the rent he supposedly pays to his buddy Soros, though still below market (he pays less than another tenant paid in...

NEW YORK (AP) - Secretary General Kofi Annan's chief of staff called the United States an "ungainly giant" that only plays by its own rules, criticizing the U.N.'s largest donor in unusually strong terms Sunday. Mark Malloch Brown said the U.S. contributed most to the development of international law in the last century, but was now the country most opposed to international constraints. "This ungainly giant of a nation that has led the world in advancing freedom, democracy and decency, cannot quite accept membership in the global neighborhood association, and the principle of all neighborhoods - that it must abide...

WASHINGTON - A top aide to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a congressional panel Thursday that a transformation of the United Nations is under way, but denied the U.N. is an out-of-control bureaucracy. "For me, the United Nations is not oversized, over-resourced or under-supervised by its member states," Malloch Brown said in a written statement to the House International Relations Committee. The panel is drafting legislation calling for major changes in the U.N.'s administration. The proposals could tie U.S. funding for the United Nations to reform efforts. U.S. congressional criticism of the United Nations has increased in light of a...

Inquiry on Food-for-Oil Plan Cites U.N. Diplomat for Conflict By JUDITH MILLER and WARREN HOGE n interim report by a commission investigating the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq said the former head of the program had violated the United Nations Charter by helping a company owned by a friend to obtain valuable contracts to sell Iraqi oil. The conduct of Benon V. Sevan, a Cypriot official who ran the program between 1997 until its demise in 2003, was a "grave and continuing conflict of interest" and had "seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations," the report concludes. The...