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Annan deputy defends appraisal of US
THE deputy to UN chief Kofi Annan today defended his candid critique of American policy towards the United Nations, dismissing suggestions it was anti-US or partisan.UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown spoke to reporters a day after calling for more consistent US leadership at the UN in a speech to mostly Democratic foreign policy-makers in New York. He said the speech was not intended to be "partisan or provocative" but was meant to convey the idea that "America needs a global foreign policy and the UN is a critical part of that". The speech slammed 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". It also said that while Washington is constructively engaged with the UN on a host of issues such as Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon or Syria, "much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as (conservative radio talk show host) Rush Limbaugh and Fox News". "Exacerbating matters is the widely held perception, even among many US allies, that the US tends to hold on to maximalist positions when it could be finding middle ground," Mr Malloch Brown said yesterday. The remarks prompted a furious reaction from the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, who described them as "a very grave mistake" and urged Mr Annan to repudiate his deputy. Mr Annan refused to do so and said through his spokesman that he "agrees with the thrust" of his deputy's speech. The slanging match coincides with a continuing deadlock between wealthy and developing nations over UN management reforms put forward by Mr Annan in the wake of a series of corruption scandals. The world body faces possible financial gridlock at the end of the month, when a $US950 million ($1.29 billion) spending cap on a two-year $US3.798 billion ($5.14 billion) UN budget agreed last December expires, if wealthy and developing countries fail to reach agreement on the reforms. Washington has threatened to withdraw funding if the reforms are not adopted by then, and EU countries have said they will have to take another look at their contributions. Mr Malloch Brown, a Briton who took over as deputy secretary general in March and will step down when Mr Annan's term ends on December 31, said his remarks were part of a bid to nudge rich and developing countries towards a compromise and avert a financial crisis. He said he had come under fire from the 132-member Group of 77 developing nations in recent months "for telling them that they too need to get their house in order and engage around this reform agenda". Mr Malloch Brown said the impasse was in part due to "a perception among many otherwise quite moderate countries that anything the US supports must have a secret agenda aimed at either subordinating multilateral processes to Washington's ends or weakening the institutions". "This organisation is slipping toward a very serious crisis," he told reporters. "We have to stand up and appeal for engagement, sanity by both sides." "This is the time where it is important that truth be spoken and everybody understand each other. "The worry for me is that the reaction to the speech will polarise things in Washington." Noting he was routinely described as "the most pro-American senior UN official", he said the speech was a "call from a friend to think hard about how the US could handle the UN better". Posted by: tipper 2006-06-07 |
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