U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said today that a U.N. Deputy Secretary-General’s remarks about the United States “can only do grave harm to the United Nations.” Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown said yesterday in a speech that the U.S. relies on the U.N as a diplomatic tool, but then does not defend the body before critics at home. Brown went on to say that news of the U.N.’s good work that reaches much of the U.S. has been “largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such a Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.”
Bolton called Brown’s remarks a “very, very grave mistake” that could undermine Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s efforts to effect a reform agenda for the U.N. Bolton told Annan that his deputy’s remarks displayed a “condescending, patronizing tone about the American people.”