Free Republic

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites)'s new chief of staff heads to Washington on Wednesday to meet with critics and supporters of the United Nations (news - web sites) following a critical report of U.N. actions in the oil-for-food program in Iraq (news - web sites). Mark Malloch Brown's high-profile trip is aimed at informing U.S. lawmakers about ongoing U.N. management and administrative reforms and appears to be the opening salvo in a new offensive by Annan to present the world body in a more positive light. One of the U.S. lawmakers Malloch Brown is scheduled...

President Donald Trump asked senior advisers last Thursday about potential options for attacking Iran's main nuclear site, US media report. The advisers warned him that military action could spark a broader conflict, officials were cited as saying. The White House has not commented on the accounts of the meeting. It took place a day after the global nuclear watchdog said Iran's enriched uranium stockpile was 12 times what was permitted under a 2015 nuclear deal. The landmark accord saw the US and five other world powers give Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in return for limits on sensitive activities...

Britain’s seat at the UN Security Council will eventually be handed to the European Union, Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office Minister, has suggested. The former diplomat was brought in by Gordon Brown to help to overhaul foreign policy was already under fire for suggesting that Britain and America would no longer be “joined at the hip”. He faces fresh controversy after it emerged that last October, when he was Deputy General Secretary of the UN, he spoke approvingly of growing EU representation on a visit to Brussels last October. According to a report by the EU Observer, he told...