US infuriated by UN official’s speech

The United States today demanded UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan renounce a speech in which his No 2 official broke with tradition and accused the United States of undermining the United Nations.

US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton called the speech by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown a "very, very grave mistake".

"I spoke to the secretary-general this morning. I said: "I've known you since 1989 and I'm telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen in that entire time," Bolton told reporters.

"To have the deputy secretary-general criticise the United States in such a manner can only do grave harm to the United Nations," Bolton said.

In the speech, delivered yesterday, Malloch Brown said that the United States relies on the United Nations as a diplomatic tool but doesn't defend it before critics at home, a policy he called unsustainable.

He lamented that that the good works of the UN are largely lost because ``much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.''