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 News from Around the Americas | March 2006 
Bolton's UN Punctuality Drive Comes to Early End
 Reuters
| | Council last month by Bolton came to an abrupt end on Thursday when Argentina took over the council's rotating presidency. (Reuters/Seth Wenig) |
An unpopular punctuality drive launched in the U.N. Security Council last month by U.S. Ambassador John Bolton came to an abrupt end on when Argentina took over the council's rotating presidency.
Bolton had cracked the whip while presiding over the 15-nation U.N. body in February, starting meetings precisely on time, even with empty chairs in the room, as part of a plan to modernise council operations.
He had also called in ambassadors almost every morning of the month for closed-door briefings by U.N. staff on overnight global political and peacekeeping developments.
But Argentine Ambassador Cesar Mayoral made clear it would be a different story in March.
If ambassadors wanted to come on time, it would be up to them, he told reporters.
As for the morning briefings, "this is impossible," he said. "We aren't having a daily briefing each day."
If an ambassador asked for a briefing on a particular matter, he would try to accommodate the request. But absent that, the council work program was simply too heavy, he said.
Some ambassadors had grumbled in February that they already had too many commitments to attend the daily sessions.
Bolton has described the U.S. campaign to reform the United Nations as an "irresistible force" pitted against an "immovable object."
Bypassing the U.S. Senate, President George W. Bush sent Bolton to the United Nations last August with instructions to shake up the world body after findings of mismanagement and corruption in the $64 billion oil-for-food program for Iraq. |
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