UNITED NATIONS-
The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. on Friday accused the No. 2 U.N. official of discrediting the United Nations by criticizing American and British diplomacy over Darfur, his latest attack on the deputy.
The ambassador John Bolton demanded Deputy U.N. Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown apologize over comments that appeared in Friday’s editions of the Independent newspaper in London. He criticized President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for threatening Sudan over its refusal to allow U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.
“The Sudanese know we don’t have troops to go in against a hostile Khartoum government; if Sudan opposes us there’s no peace to keep anyway; you’re in there to fight a war,” Malloch Brown said. “It’s just not a credible threat.”
Malloch Brown said those threats allowed Sudan to portray itself as “the victims of the next crusade after Iraq and Afghanistan,” and said the U.S. and Britain “need to get beyond this posturing and grandstanding.”
Bolton said Malloch Brown’s remarks could undermine the U.N. Security Council’s demand that the U.N. take over from an underfunded African Union force that has been unable to stop the violence in Darfur. Sudan has so far refused to give the U.N. control of the mission.
“Let me say these remarks bring discredit to the United Nations and are a stain on its reputation,” Bolton told reporters at the U.N. “It’s a terrible signal to the government in Khartoum and should never have been uttered,” he added later.
“We are proud that we have called the attention of the international community to the tragedy in Darfur. We are proud of our efforts to bring relief to that tragedy. And to have Mr. Malloch Brown attack those efforts, as I say, brings great discredit to this institution,” he said.
Few U.N. officials seem to spark Bolton’s ire more than Malloch Brown. In June, the American ambassador said Malloch Brown, a Briton, made a “very, very grave mistake” for a speech in which he argued that the U.S. employs stealth diplomacy at the U.N.–relying on it, yet refusing to defend it before critics at home.
And in an interview with USA Today earlier this year, Malloch Brown himself said Bolton was “a real force here, but in a way that provokes a lot of reaction and opposition from others.”
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that the United States was proud to have kept the pressure on Sudan.
“Rather than focusing on what the U.S. or the U.K. or others might be doing, he might apply himself to the task at hand rather than giving speeches,” McCormack said of Malloch Brown.
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