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.
""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."
Nope its not a secret. We just don't like what the UN does. If there are any lingering doubts look to Africa and all of the UN "successes" there.
The UN is completely corrupt and lacks any perspective for the individual. All that matters to the UN is where they can steal money and the wishes of the latest dictator.
We're just darned tired of giving the UN $Millions and then have them vote against our interests most of the time. And, then there's all these corrupt........well, you get my drift.
I note how he went to great pains to mention "middle America."
Ah yes! The flyover states! Anyone in Middle America willing to lend the UN a vacant barn for its new HQ? I'm beginning to think that they've been in New York far too long.
I want us out of the U.N. for good. It does nothing for us. We end up having to police the world ourselves, at our expense, because the U.N. is nothing but a debating club and talks itself and everyone else to death. It is a useless organization, whose work could be taken up by private organizations for half the price. Get the U.S. out of it, Mr. Ambassador, and sell the U.N. property, which is worth a gazillion, to a private developer. The U.N. is nothing but a drain on our brains and our pocketbooks.
That U.N. sure did rise to the occasion when our U.S. Embassy in Iran was taken over and AMERICANS WERE HELD AS PRISONERS for 444 days.
The silence from the U.N. was deafening. Their inaction was worse.
Or, am I remembering wrong?
It's bad enough I have to wet-nurse Montgomery,I don't have to stand for that!
-George Patton, "Patton"
Kofi used to be a hot-dog cart vendor at McCallaster College in Minnesota.
Now, he's running the friggin UN. Bizzare.
Screw him and the UN.
I took the little UN tour when in New York last week. You would think that the UN had the answer to all the worlds problems...
* Center for American Progress aka CAP :
I'm reading Madam Hillary which is a more interesting book than I thought it would be.
Page 28 mentions that Hillary has organized and gotten funding (with the help of Soros and others) for several think tanks including the Center for American Progress. The Center has a 501(c)4 designation which permits the propoganda section to be more aggressively partisan.
Sara Wartell, a veteran of the Clinton administration, is the Center's chief operating officer. The Center focuses on hot button issues in Washington with an eye to influencing Congress, the public and the media through a sophisticated rapid response media campaign.
The rapid response media campaign is run by Debbie Berger, the daughter of Sandy Berger!
----82 posted on 08/11/2004 3:46:40 PM PDT by Peach
Bolten is a star performer in the UN, this whiny Brit lecturing about middle America is quite ridiculous. Atleast middle America has more class,culture and morals than the soccer mad British yobbos residing in their stinkin cities.
...The Center for American Progress and its sister organization, the American Progress Action Fund, are at the vanguard of liberal attempts to regain the initiative in the national political debate. Founded in 2003 with millions of dollars from donors hoping to more effectively counter the Bush White House and conservative groups, CAP relentlessly attacks conservatives and distributes talking points to its ideological allies.
Unfortunately, however, the group has also shown a repeated willingness to distort the facts in order to achieve its objectives. In a number of recent cases, CAP has twisted the words of its conservative opponents, misleading thousands of readers of its influential Progress Report newsletter. These tactics show that state of the art spin is increasingly indistinguishable from outright dishonesty.
----------- "Distortion report : How the Center for American Progress twists quotations," By Brendan Nyhan, spinsanity.org, October 28, 2004
Might I suggest an Indonesian chicken coop?
If you ask me, he is still pushing a bunch of wieners around, just gets better pay and perks.
And Mark Malloch Brown is said to be a pro-US reformer. We have very few friends in the UN nest of snakes.
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