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U.N. Official Calls U.S. 'Ungainly Giant'
U.N. Official Calls U.S. 'Ungainly Giant'
By DESMOND BUTLER
The Associated Press
Sunday, May 22, 2005; 9:54 PM
NEW YORK -- Secretary General Kofi Annan's chief of staff called the United States an "ungainly giant" that only plays by its own rules, criticizing the U.N.'s largest donor in unusually strong terms Sunday.
Mark Malloch Brown said the U.S. contributed most to the development of international law in the last century, but was now the country most opposed to international constraints.
"This ungainly giant of a nation that has led the world in advancing freedom, democracy and decency, cannot quite accept membership in the global neighborhood association, and the principle of all neighborhoods _ that it must abide by others' rules as well as its own," Malloch Brown said at the commencement address to Pace University law students.
Malloch Brown's comments, provided to The Associated Press by the university, were unusually forceful for an organization whose leaders tend to abide by an unwritten rule of not criticizing member nations.
But Annan himself has responded more energetically in recent months to U.S. critics of the United Nations who have focused on the U.N. chief and the world body as a whole following embarrassing revelations stemming from probes of the United Nations' oil-for-food program and other scandals.
Earlier this week, a congressional committee drafted a bill that threatens to withhold tens of millions of dollars in dues from the United Nations unless the world body conducts wide-ranging reforms. Malloch Brown and several other officials have said the idea will only isolate the United Sates.
Malloch Brown noted that the United States has already set itself apart in its opposition to the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty seeking to mandate reductions in emissions. But, he added, "nor, admirably, will it accept other compromises in the pursuit of freedom and liberty."
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