President Bush's U.N. report card: Look for some 'needs improvement' marks

President Bush has not always had the best of relations with the United Nations. He is, after all, the president who dispatched John R. Bolton as his ambassador there. The envoy did little to disguise his distaste from time to time with the "multilateral" approach.

Six months before the United States invaded Iraq, the president went to New York to tell the U.N. how much he respected the organization — but he'd put Saddam Hussein in his place with or without U.N. approval.

So here comes the president making his farewell address to the world body on Tuesday.

He will focus on how the United Nations and other multinational organizations can be improved to meet current challenges, said Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security advisor, in a preview of the speech that sounds something like an eight-year report card, with some check marks for "needs improvement."

"He believes," Hadley said in an interview with a small group of reporters, that the United Nations "has an important role to play in meeting the challenges of this new century," along with NATO, the European Union and other multinational organizations.

But Bush will also say that the U.N. needs to do better at confronting the challenges facing the world today, according to the senior aide. Among the president's complaints: The world body has been "glacially slow" in placing peacekeepers in Sudan.

Look, also, for reminders from the president directed at Russia to adhere to the commitments it made in the wake of the crisis in Georgia. Bush will be directing that message at Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. Neither President Dmitri Medvedev nor Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin are expected to attend, Hadley said.

As for the U.N. and other such organizations, Hadley said the president would recommend "that we need to have an attitude of partnership, not patronizing; that you want to partner with governments that are making the right decisions for their people — that are governing justly, investing in their people, understand the power of markets to lift people out of poverty."

— James Gerstenzang

Photo: Stuart Price / Associated Press

Comments

[JuanM]

Why should we really care what the UN gives us in some strange "report card?" We should be grading that "organization." 20% of their budget comes from the USA. The US taxpayer deserves accountability of that useless place. From the Oil for food scandal to the rape of innocent people by UN "peace" keepers in Africa, the UN is a waste of time and should be disbanded.