inside the glass house

Bolton from the blue: UN hater as US ambassador
NEW YORK - The United Nations, which has been politically crippled by charges of mismanagement and malfeasance, was hit by a diplomatic thunderbolt last week.

The nomination of John Bolton as the new US envoy to the UN came as an unexpected and deadly surprise. But it certainly reinforced the Bush administration's rejection of multilateralism and its disdain for international treaties. Bolton is contemptuous of both.

A hard-line conservative with absolute scorn for the world body, Bolton may create more enemies in an organisation which has remained strongly sceptical of an anti-multilateralist Bush administration which went to war with Iraq dismissing UN opposition to it.

If he arrives in New York armed with his ideological baggage - as he surely will - Bolton would destroy rather than restructure the ailing world body. Judging by his past statements - and his notoriety to recklessly shoot from his hips in the old Wild West tradition - Bolton is a disappointing choice for a job that requires diplomatic savvy in dealing delicately with 190-member states.

"There is no such thing as the United Nations," Bolton once remarked. "There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that is the United States, when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along."

In an interview with National Public Radio, he was even more blunt about the ongoing proposals for the reform and restructuring of the Security Council: "If I were re-doing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the only real reflection of the distribution of power in the world". Asked who that "one member" would be, Bolton shot back: "the United States".

That would leave the other four permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, France, China and Russia - in the dustbin of history. Meanwhile, the mostly idle and lethargic UN bureaucracy has been best exemplified by a longstanding anecdote of a visitor gazing at the imposing 39-storey glasshouse and asking a former Secretary-General as to how many people work in the imposing secretariat building.

"Only half", says the Secretary-General, implying that the other half are mostly clock watchers. Bolton was more blunt. "If the UN secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories," he once remarked, "it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

According to political scuttlebutt in Washington, Bolton's nomination was backed by Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the strongest rightwing neoconservatives in the higher echelons of the Bush administration.

If Bolton's nomination is confirmed by the Senate, which already has the ruling party's Republican majority, the UN may be in for harder times.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, fighting for his survival amidst charges of mismanagement and perhaps nepotism, has been trying to reform and restructure the world body to meet the needs of the 21st century.

But he can do neither unless he has the backing of the US, the largest single donor to the UN budget accounting for 22 percent of the total contributions.

Obviously, Annan is conscious of the impending disaster, but as the supreme diplomat presiding over the international community he dare not make any negative comments or even drop any hints of his scepticism.

As expected, the secretary-general's initial comments were to "welcome" the appointment of Bolton. But the 'Wall Street Journal', an ardent supporter of Bolton, was not convinced of Annan's good faith.

"So we can only assume that Mr. Annan was sincere when he welcomed President Bush's decision to nominate John Bolton...." the Journal said in an editorial which was appropriately titled "Tough Love for the UN".

Pressed for further comments, Annan blurted his official line to reporters last week: "It is a president's prerogative to name his ambassadors. And I have worked well with all previous representatives from the US, and I look forward to working with Mr. Bolton," he said.

Told that there was a lot of criticisms and concern among many member-states about Bolton's nomination, the secretary-general refused to be dragged into a controversy. "I think I've said all that I need to say on the topic," he added, refusing to answer any other questions on Bolton.

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