Tough challenges face new US ambassador to UN
John Bolton will face many challenges in his new job as US ambassador to the United Nations, but one is paramount: showing that he can work with diplomats from 190 other countries in a place he has attacked as irrelevant.
The 56-year-old arms control expert with a reputation for brilliance, obstinacy and speaking his mind arrived yesterday at the United Nations just weeks before a summit where Secretary-General Kofi Annan hopes world leaders will adopt sweeping changes to enable the UN to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Bolton will be thrust into intense negotiations on contentious issues ranging from Security Council reform and poverty alleviation to stepping up the global fight against terrorism and improving UN management.
“He will be one of the key players because the United States is the largest contributor and a great power in the Security Council,” Germany’s UN Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said. “There are conflicting views on nearly every issue that is on our plate for the reform, and the largest player in the UN, of course, plays a key role.”
Many UN diplomats say Bolton will be judged on his performance here, not on his past, like every other ambassador. The United Nations attracts top-level diplomatic talent, many with high profiles and some with controversial backgrounds.
“No one should make pre-judgments on reputation,” said Chile’s UN Ambassador Heraldo Munoz. “One must do it on the merit of the facts, when we see what happens here.”
“This is not the State Department. This is not a government. This is an international organisation of sovereign states and negotiation is the rule of the game,” Munoz said.
The fact that Bolton failed twice to win confirmation in the US Senate, forcing President George Bush to appoint him yesterday after Congress adjourned for the summer, was also unlikely to have an impact, diplomats said.
“He’s a colleague like any other and will be received as such,” said Denmark’s UN Ambassador Ellen Margrethe Loj, who noted that in many countries including her own no confirmation of ambassadors is required.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters yesterday that he will welcome Bolton and looks forward to working with him – in the same way that he works with ambassadors from the other UN member states.
Bolton was scheduled to present his credentials to Annan late this morning.
The Bush administration says a tough-talking Bolton is ideally suited to lead an effort to overhaul the UN bureaucracy and make it more accountable. But Annan cautioned that negotiation and compromise are the key to success at the United Nations.
“I think it is alright for one ambassador to come and push, but an ambassador always has to remember that there are 190 others who will have to be convinced, or a vast majority of them, for action to take place,” Annan said.
Bolton will certainly face antagonism from some countries including North Korea and Iran. In 2003, he said North Korea was led by a “tyrannical dictator,” while he contends Iran is secretly planning to build nuclear weapons.
Bolton’s past comments about the United Nations and his intimation that the US can pull the strings have also not been forgotten, and will likely make some UN members wary.
In 1994, Bolton said it wouldn’t make a “bit of difference” if the top 10 floors of the United Nations – which include the secretary-general’s office - vanished from the 39-story headquarters building.
In the same speech, he said there is “no such thing as the United Nations,” just “an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that is the US.”
While Bolton has been highly critical of the United Nations, he is no stranger to its inner workings. He dealt with UN affairs in the State Department from 1989-93, and in his latest post as the department’s arms control chief he has had frequent contacts with the Chinese and Russians, and will find several familiar faces in their delegations and elsewhere.
“Honestly, I’m looking forward to working with him,” said Algeria’s UN Ambassador Abdallah Baali, whose two-year term on the Security Council ends in December. “I worked with him several years ago, and I enjoyed working with him.”
“He’s a very smart guy who can be very constructive, who can be very creative. So I think it will be very interesting to spend a few months with him in the Security Council,” Baali said.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Konstantin Dolgov said Bolton was well known in Moscow and “as far as I know he is a negotiator with quite some background.” Like every other permanent representative, Bolton will have to represent his country’s interests, he said.
“But the issue at stake is to find the balance of national interests in order to enhance the organisation and multilateralism in general – so hopefully he would be acting in this vein, in this direction,” Dolgov said.
Diplomats said Bolton’s first test will come very quickly in whether he plays a positive role in helping to find that balance and make the September summit a success.
With just over six weeks left to produce a final document that all 191 UN member states support, negotiations are heating up on many contentious issues: expanding the powerful Security Council, creating a new Peacebuilding Commission, revamping the UN’s human rights machinery, defining terrorism, protecting civilians facing war crimes and genocide, and overhauling the UN Secretariat.
“I think this is a time when it is make or break as far as the future relevance of the United Nations is concerned,” said Germany’s Pleuger.
