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Bush had top British U.N. official sacked

LONDON: For all the much-touted U.K.-U.S. “special” relationship during the Blair era, anti-British feelings ran high at the top of the Bush administration, it has now emerged. And it comes straight from the horse’s mouth.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a close ally of President George W. Bush, has revealed that his boss was so infuriated by the “anti-Americanism” of senior British diplomats at the U.N. that he got Mark Malloch-Brown, U.N.’s Deputy Secretary-General under Kofi Annan, sacked for criticising American policies.

Mr. Bolton reportedly says in a forthcoming book that President Bush specifically asked the new Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to “get rid of Malloch-Brown” describing him as “anti-American”. According to him, this happened during an informal meeting between President Bush and the new Secretary-General designate on October 17 last year.

Subsequently, Mr. Malloch-Brown was sent packing. When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he made him a peer and appointed him Foreign Office Minister. In Washington, his appointment was seen as a snub to the Bush administration.

Lord Malloch-Brown, known for his outspoken views on American foreign policy, nearly touched off a diplomatic spat when, within days of becoming Minister, he called for Britain to stop kow-towing to Washington.

According to a report in The Times, Mr. Bolton, in his book “Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”, lays into Lord Malloch-Brown for criticising America. “This petty bureaucrat obviously saw himself as floating above U.N. member-governments, rather than recognising he was a mere international servant,” he says.

Mr. Bolton, who resigned at the end of 2006 after a brief term, attacks British diplomats for what he regards as their patronising attitude, citing his contemporary Sir Emyr Jones-Parry, Britain’s then permanent representative to the U.N., as an example.

“Many Brits believed that their role in life was….lending us the benefit of their superior suaveness… Jones-Parry was obviously of that ilk,” he writes.

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