THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: UN must apologise

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.

Malloch Brown said the United States relies on the United Nations as a diplomatic tool but doesn't defend it against criticism at home, a policy of "stealth diplomacy" that he called unsustainable.

He lamented that the good works of the U.N. are largely lost because "much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News."

We're obviously not thinking properly and our government is to blame. In all fairness, FOX News admits to "hammering" the UN, but in my opinion the UN deserves it.

Message to Mr. Brown, we're the same people who elected Bush and our answer is Bolton.

"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 U.N. official that I have seen in that entire time," Bolton told reporters on Wednesday.

"To have the deputy secretary-general criticize the United States in such a manner can only do grave harm to the United Nations," Bolton said.

The money is already being withheld.

On June 2, First Lady Laura Bush told the UN to preach abstinence when they tried to shake the U.S. down for more money for AIDS 'research'. Only days before, a major study had been published that said AIDS was, indeed, caused by some monkey business(!) DUH. Most of that information only verified what was known about the disease 25 yrs. ago. Two days before Mrs. Bush visited the U.N. (and smiled a smile that said "Not a dime") there was a sit-in at the U.N. HQ where "activists" of every virulent strain demanded more money for AIDS research. Read fat payoffs for Kofi and his crew.

Just look at these three incidents in one week. Major study(how much did that cost?) says the things we've known about AIDS all along, but it got alot of ink, then the 'activists' start their whiny BS for the media, who covered it better than they did Zark's bombing, and then our lovely and elegant and Texan First Lady Laura shows up and tells the bloodsucking leeches who continually pick our pockets to basically, jam it. All the while, smiling her lovely smile!

President Bush backed Bolton against heavy odds. Bolton is doing a great job and cutting them down to size. This creepy little bully, hyphen man Malloch-Brown, tried to push Bolton and the U.S. because they didn't get the payola from the AIDS deal. Does anyone really think that GWB and John Bolton are going to allow the U.N. to disarm Americans?
That's just some more bullying and threatening. I hope Bolton turns that place back into a sheep pen, which, ironically, it was before it became a black hole for American tax dollars.

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