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America angry over "hypocrites" remark

Oliver Burkeman

Envoy calls it "grave mistake"

John Bolton

New York: Deputy Secretary-General of the U.N. was on Wednesday night accused of making ``a very, very grave mistake'' after calling the Bush administration hypocrites who were feeding a right-wing anti-U.N. frenzy in middle America.

Washington's Ambassador to the U.N. responded with undisguised fury to a speech by Mark Malloch Brown, the Deputy Secretary-General, in which he accused Washington of using the international body ``almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool'' while failing to defend it at home.

U.N.-bashing

``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,'' Mr. Malloch Brown said in a speech in New York on Tuesday.

Depending on the U.N. while tolerating ``too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping'' was ``simply not sustainable,'' he said. ``You will lose the U.N. one way or another.''

John Bolton, U.S. envoy and an outspoken critic of the world forum, called the comments ``a very, very grave mistake.'' He said he told Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday morning: ``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.'' He called on Mr. Annan to repudiate the speech.

Tensions between the U.N. and (U.S. President) George Bush's White House have been simmering since the war in Iraq, but they also encompass deep splits over the International Criminal Court and the new Human Rights Council, whose formation the U.S. was one of only four states to oppose.

But the diplomatic tradition according to which U.N. officials do not publicly attack specific member states has a longer history still.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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