For nearly two and a half years, the United Nations has sought to skirt responsibility for a ravenous Haitian cholera epidemic that killed at least 8,000 Haitians -- and sickened several hundred thousand more -- since the first outbreak was detected in October 2010, downriver from a sewage outlet used by a contingent of Nepalese blue helmets.

Today, Ban Ki-moon phoned Haitian president Michel Martelly to inform him that the United Nations has no intention, or legal obligation, to pay compensation to the families of Haiti's cholera victims.

"In November 2011, a claim for compensation was brought against the United Nations on behalf of the victims of the cholera outbreak in Haiti," Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters on Thursday. "Today, the United Nations advised the claimants representatives that the claims are no receivable pursuant to section 29 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations."

Nesirky highlighted the U.N.'s role in trying to contain the spread of cholera, saying it has worked closely with Haitians "to provide treatment, improve water and sanitation facilities and strengthen prevention and early warning."

"The secretary general expresses his profound sympathy for the terrible suffering caused by the cholera epidemic, and calls on all partners in Haiti and the international community to work together to ensure better health and a better future for the people of Haiti," Nesirky said.

The Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti filed the claim on behalf of the families of 5,000 victims, and is preparing claims on behalf of thousands more. Brian Concannon, the director of the organization, told Turtle Bay that the U.N. should be held liable for "negligent failure" to screen peacekeepers from a country known to have cholera and for the "reckless disposal of waste into Haiti's largest water system."

Concannon said that while the United Nations has signed a status of forces agreement with Haiti that shields it from suits brought by Haitian courts, the global body has an obligation to provide "an alternative mechanism" for victims to seek redress. His group is now preparing to pursue a case in a national court -- either within Haiti, the United States, the Netherlands, or Belgium -- to persuade a judge not to enforce the immunity agreement on the grounds that the United Nations has not lived up to "its side of the bargain."

"It's round two," he said.

The United Nations peacekeeping department has long maintained that a series of studies failed to present irrefutable evidence that U.N. peacekeepers were responsible for the outbreak. They argued that it would be more productive to invest the U.N.'s resources into trying to contain the spread of the disease rather than determining who was responsible for introducing cholera into Haiti for the first time in more than 100 years.

Following protests from Haitians, Ban commissioned a panel of independent medical experts to "investigate and seek to determine the source of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti." The four-member team, headed by Dr. Alejandro Cravioto, head of the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh, provided strong circumstantial evidence hinting at a U.N. role but stopped just short of pinning the blame on the Nepalese peacekeepers.

The panel concluded, as Turtle Bay reported at the time, "that the disease was introduced into the Haitian population by human activity in the Meye Tributary, a branch of the Artibonite River, and quickly spread throughout the river delta, infecting thousands of Haitians along the way. At the time, Nepalese peacekeepers were stationed at a camp in Mierbalais, along the banks of the Meye, fueling suspicion that the waste of an infected peacekeeper had flowed into the river."

But the panel argued that the other forces contributing to the spread of the disease -- poor sanitation and a dysfunctional health care system -- were so varied as to make it impossible to identify a specific culprit. "The independent panel concludes that the Haiti cholera outbreak was caused by the confluence of circumstances as described above, and was not the fault of, or deliberate action of, a group or individual," read the report.

A U.S. cholera expert at Tufts Univeristy, Daniele Lantagne, who was a member of the U.N. panel, told the BBC last October that further scientific evidence pointed more conclusively towards the Nepalese peacekeepers. She said it is "most likely" that they were the source of the outbreak.

Jonathan Katz, a former Associated Press reporter who covered the cholera outbreak, said the U.N. has "spent the last year and change saying" they can't talk about the cholera epidemic because the claims case was pending. But now, he said, the U.N. maintains that it won't even consider the claim.

Katz, who authored the recent book on the Haiti relief effort, The Big Truck that Went By, said U.N.'s refusal to confront responsibility reflects a deeper concern that establishing precedent could open the door to a slew of lawsuits against the United Nations around the world.

"The United Nations is concerned about the precedent this would set for U.N. peacekeeping and the other work they do around the world," he said. "I can imagine a long line of people going around the world that would love to go after the United Nations."

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If you felt your life was on hold the past week or so, as the U.S. election entered its final stretch, take comfort -- so was the rest of the world, at least at the United Nations. The U.S. political campaign placed a number of U.N. foreign-policy priorities, including Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran, on the backburner.

More...

But within hours of President Barack Obama's reelection, the United States had begun to turn its attention to deferred business, agreeing Wednesday, for instance, to set a date for resumption of negotiations on the establishment of a new arms trade treaty.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, used his congratulatory message to President Obama to draw Washington's attention to four key priorities -- ending the bloodshed in Syria, restarting the Middle East peace process, promoting sustainable development, and tackling climate change -- requiring greater American engagement.

There are a number of areas, including arms control and possibly climate change, where the administration may show renewed vigor in a second term, according to U.N. observers. But they cautioned that movement on a second-term agenda would start slow, given the months it will likely take to put a new foreign policy team in place. The king, said one observer, will be the same, but the royal court will be new.

The administration will face the first test of its standing at the United Nations on Monday, when it will participate in its first competitive election for a seat on the Human Rights Council, facing off with Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Sweden for three Western spots on the U.N.'s main rights body. Washington has been aggressively campaigning for the post, seeking to avert an embarrassing loss. "People are nervous about it; they don't think it in the bag," said one U.N.-based source.

Observers said they did not foresee the administration pursuing a particularly ambitious agenda at the United Nations. Richard Gowan, an expert on the United Nations at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, said he saw little likelihood that the U.S. would move, for instance, to join the International Criminal Court, push for ratification of the Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty, or press for expansion of the U.N. Security Council.  "Just as Obama was burdened with excessive expectations at the start of his first term I think quite a lot of leaders may have excessive expectations of what he will do now that he is reelected," Gowan said.

So, what will a second term Obama administration pull off the backburner and pursue with renewed vigor? Read the full list here.

The U.N.'s newly renovated landmark building on First Avenue was still reeling Wednesday from the impact of superstorm Sandy, which flooded Turtle Bay's third basement with several feet of water, paralyzing the building's electronic nerve center and preventing many U.N. staffers from returning to their offices. The U.N. issued an emergency bulletin today that said the building is due to open tomorrow, though offices above floor 17 will not be accessible.

The white tent that serves as the official delegates entryway to the United Nations General Assembly was ripped to shreds by the gale force winds. A large white sheet of plastic that stretched over the U.N. General Assembly dome is also stripped away, creating the impression, if not the reality, that the world's parliament had been cracked open to the elements.

The United Nations slowly emerged from storm today, as some U.N. officials either worked from their computers and Blackberrys at home, or returned to a network of U.N. offices beyond the main compound that had better withstood the storm's punch. But the U.N. secretariat's server appeared to be misfiring even today, as multiple emails sent to U.N. officials were returned to sender hours later.

The Security Council scheduled its first post-storm meeting in a temporary conference room on the U.N. compound north lawn building, which has served as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's office throughout the $1 billion-plus restoration of U.N. headquarters.

The Security Council extended the mandate for African Union peacekeepers in Somalia before it was due to expire today and adopted a statement promoting the role of women in peace and security.

But there were no plans to address some of the council's more pressing issues, including the Syrian ceasefire that never really took hold over last weekend. "I don't thing there will be much substance today," said one council diplomat.

The U.N. Development Program is "slowly beginning to return to normal," said Heraldo Munoz, an assistant secretary general at UNDP, who returned to work at his office across the street from U.N. headquarters. "We have several people working, mainly people living in Manhattan, but we are in communication with those people who could not make it and are working from their homes."

The flooding at U.N. headquarters has inflicted "severe damage to the building's communications infrastructure," he said. "There was flooding that affected the machinery and power that cools the computer machinery" that runs the building.

Another U.N. diplomat said that the Secretariat's "information and communications technology and electrical infrastructure are very, very damaged. UNDP's and UNICEF's are in much better shape. There will be many questions about this in the coming days."

The U.N. has previously been closed on the occasional workday, including on 9/11, when U.N. staff were evacuated amid fears that terrorists would attack the diplomatic center. But U.N. officials said today that they could not recall another episode when a natural disaster had forced the U.N. Secretariat to shutter its doors for so long, three days so far.

As of this morning, U.N. security continued to prohibit all but repair crews from entering headquarters.

Much of the U.N.'s diplomatic community remained partially cut off from their colleagues, communicating with Blackberrys that stopped working for much of the day on Tuesday.

Many U.N.-based diplomats, particularly younger, mid-level staff who don't reside in official residences, live in lower Manhattan, which suffered a massive blackout, or in the suburbs of Westchester County, which also saw significant losses of electricity.

"The impact for me has been total isolation," said one European diplomat posted at the United Nations. "I've been totally stuck in a powerless building.... I have very little insight to what's been going on" at headquarters.

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The Masked Avengers, the notorious Canadian radio disc jockey duo,  have struck again. Their latest victim: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The comic team of Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel is best known for tricking former GOP vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, three years ago into participating in a six-minute conversation with a fake French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Yesterday, in the middle of the U.N. General Assembly session, the duo placed a call to Ban, claiming that Canadian President Stephen Harper wanted to talk to him. Ban's staff pulled him out of a meeting to take the call.

Speaking in halting French, the fake Harper apologizes for not showing up for this week's General Assembly debate, explaining that he had another priority to attend to: "I was combing my hair with crazy glue," he explains in French.

"Excusé moi," Ban responds, sounding confused. "Is this Prime Minister Harper speaking?" he asks in French.

"Yes, hello, Stephen Harper speaking," the fake Harper responds, speaking now in English. "How are you Mr. Secretary General?"

"How are you, how are you?" Ban answers, sounding relieved to be speaking in English. But his confusion returns when the fake Harper appeals to the world's top diplomat to use his diplomatic skills to convince the head of the National Hockey League, Gary Bettman, to return the Quebec Nordiques (who were sold to Denver and have become the Colorado Avalanche) to Canada.

"Actually, I was calling you because the U.N. has to give the support to the return of the les Nordiques," Fake Harper explains.

"Pardon?" Ban asks.

"I was calling about the most important subject for us," Fake Harper says.

"Oh, I do not understand what you are saying," Ban says. "About what?"

"It's about the hockey team the Quebec Nordiques you have to speak to Gary Bettman to bring them back. Now it's a big situation."

A U.N. spokesman, Farhan Haq, confirmed that "the Secretary General did receive such a call and he very quickly realized it was a prank. He took it in the way it was intended -- as a joke."

"In this week of all weeks there are so many calls coming in from all over the world and from many delegations, and it was perhaps not the best use of his time, but these things can happen," Haq said. "It's obviously not supposed to happen and we will be listening out extra hard in future for poor French accents on the line from Canada."

In 2008, Audette posed as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and got a call through to Sarah Palin, just days before the U.S. election. Speaking in an exaggerated French accident, saying she would make a great president one day, and that he shared a passion with the governor for hunting.

"I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun," Fake Sarkozy told her.

"You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife," Palin told Fake Sarkozy, referring to Carla Bruni. "Oh my goodness, you've added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours."

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I've been reading Kofi Annan's upcoming memoir, Interventions: A Life in Peace and War, and just ran across a fascinating passage describing a friendly luncheon, well maybe not so friendly, the then-U.N. chief had with the Supreme Court justices during a visit to Washington, D.C.

Justice Stephen Breyer had invited Annan to sit for "salads and sandwiches" with the Supremes, apparently part of a local D.C. tradition for famous visitors.

The conversation turned to the establishment of an International Criminal Court, which was established in 2002 to prosecute individuals for massive crimes, including genocide and war crimes. And it quickly grew contentious.

"I'll be damned if I'm going to let my son be dragged before some foreign kangaroo court to face judgment," said one of the judges, who is not named, but is said to have a son who had served as a U.S. Army captain in Iraq. (Justice Antonin Scalia's son, Matthew, served as a U.S. Army captain in Iraq.)

Annan appeared to have been taken aback by the reaction, saying that while he knew that many American politicians and commentators were hostile to the court he was surprised to here it put so bluntly by a Supreme Court Justice.

"I tried to reassure the irate justice about the procedures that were in place to stop frivolous prosecutions; that the ICC would act only when there was a credible accusation and the state in questions was unwilling or unable to investigate and prosecute the matter," Annan wrote. "He was unconvinced."

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As the late Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's forces prepared to crush the Libyan uprising last summer in Benghazi, Britain, France, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and other allies moved quickly to reinforce the beleaguered rebel forces.

With military supplies, training, advice -- and of course the backing of NATO war planes -- this coalition of governments provided critical support to change the course of the conflict, ultimately leading to Qaddafi's downfall.

The U.N. Security Council's arms embargo was primarily intended to constrain Qaddafi's capacity to use its massive oil wealth to import new stocks of weapons and foreign mercenaries to help put down the rebellion. But it also placed restraints on the supply of weapons to the rebels, prompting the Security Council to later introduce an exemption -- providing significant cover for governments seeking to arm the rebels.

A new report by a U.N. panel of experts responsible for monitoring the arms embargo in Libya sought to itemize a list of military supplies -- everything from sandbags to shouldered propelled rockets -- that flowed into Libya after the U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Libya in February 2011. The list, however, is incomplete because NATO and some of the insurgents' chief military backers, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have refused to provide a full account of their contributions.

The report identified numerous attempts by the Qaddafi regime "to secure arms deals and use mercenaries from neighboring countries," citing reports in the Globe and Mail about a July 2011 visit to Beijing by Libyan officials seeking to purchase military supplies from three Chinese arms manufacturers. (China denied that the talks led to any deals.) The panel also cited reports that much of Libya's military capacity had been reconstituted after 2004, following years of Western and U.N. sanctions, with the aid of Western European countries and ex-Soviet states (The panel also noted that is conducting an ongoing investigation into Qaddafi's use of mercenaries, adding that so far it had found "no conclusive evidence.")

But the 78-page report provides insights into how the international community combined diplomatic pressure, military airpower, and clandestine arms deliveries, to topple a regime. It would not be surprising if some of those countries considering backing the Syrian campaign to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria are drawing from the same playbook.

The United States

Though U.S. airpower proved decisive in crippling Qaddafi's defenses, the United States maintains that it provided only non-lethal military support to the rebels. The report notes that on February 6, the United States provided the panel with a list of its contributions, including 8,000 uniforms, 8,000 boots, 5,825 load-bearing vests, 2,850 bullet proof vests, 1,975 military helmets, and "items for defensive positions (sandbags, Hescos...)."

Italy

The Italian government notified the panel on February 14 that it supplied 10 military trainers, 10,000 uniforms, 5,400 helmets and 2,800 leather boots.

United Kingdom.

On February 9, the United Kingdom informed the panel that it supplies the rebels with 6,000 sets of body armor and no more than 20 military personnel. The British action, according to the report, was intended to "provide a military assistance team to the Libyan authorities for the purpose of providing operational assistance, training and mentoring on security issues, including reform of the armed services, counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency."

France

In April 2011, the French government notified the United Nations that it had sent a small team of military advisors to Libya to provide the National Transitional Council with "support and advice on ways to organize its internal structure, manage its resources and improve its communications." In June, it went further, notifying the UN that it had "airdropped self-defence weapons for the civilian populations that had been victims of attacks by Libyan armed forces." The panel's report contains no detailed list of these contributions as the French asked it to keep the details confidential.

Albania

The panel said that it has obtained information that several flights operating from Tirana, Albania, transported military materiel to Benghazi over a three day period in September, 2011. The case remains under investigation.

Sudan

One of the more tantalizing revelations in the panel report is the suggestion that Darfuri rebel groups, including members of the Zaghawa tribe and fighters from the Justice and Equality Movement, may have backed Qaddafi's counterinsurgency campaign. The panel said that while it was not able to "definitely corroborate" numerous reports of the military role in the conflict, ‘the accumulative strength of intelligence gives substantial credibility to these findings." No to be outdone, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, extended overflight rights over Sudanese territory to NATO, according to senior U.N. diplomats, and allegedly supplied arms to the insurgents, according to the panel. The panel cited claims by the Benghazi rebel defense ministry that Sudan provided "small arms and light weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades," and transported other supplies to Bengazhi on two Ilyushin-76 aircraft. "According to media reports, on 26 October, the President of the Sudan, Omar Al-Bashir, gave a speech in Kasala in which he acknowledged weapons deliveries from the Sudan to Libya and that the weapons had reached revolutionaries in Misratah, Al-Jabal Al-Gharabi and Zawiya." The Sudanese government did not reply to the panel's request for information.

Qatar

In March 2011, Qatar notified the United Nations that it would participate in NATO enforcement of the U.N.-authorized no-fly zone over Libya, contributing "a number of military aircraft, military transport aircraft and helicopters." Qatar categorically denied media reports that "it had supplied the revolutionaries with arms and ammunition," saying only that it had "sent a limited number of military personnel to provide military consultations to the revolutionaries, defend Libyan civilians and protect aid convoys." The only weapons and ammunition it had furnished was for the use of Qatari military advisors in self-defense.

But the Qatari contention had one big hole in it. In July, 2011, a Swiss television station discovered spent Swiss ammunition used by the Libyan revolutionaries. The Swiss ammo had been exported to the Qatar armed forces in 2009 by a Swiss arms company, FGS Frex, and made its way to Libya. Confronted by Swiss authorities, who noted that Qatar was prohibited from re-exporting the ammunition, the Qatari ambassador appeared to have confirmed its role in the supply of ammunition. "The ambassador of Qatar explained to the Swiss representatives that the ‘transfer of the aforementioned ammunition to the Libyan opposition was a misadventure in the course of his country's support of the NATO operation in Libya.' He reassured the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs that ‘Qatar took the appropriate measures to prevent similar errors in the future.'"

The United Arab Emirates

The panel provided few details about alleged arms transfers by the United Arab Emirates, partly because it is conducting an ongoing investigation into the matter, and partly because the Gulf state refused to provide the panel with a list of its contributions. On March 25, "the United Arab Emirates notified the [UN] Secretary General that it would participate, within the framework of the international coalition, by providing military aircraft. No notification was given regarding transfers of weapons or ammunition or provision of military personnel." The panel visited the UAE to inquire about its role in arming and advising the Libyan insurgents. The government insisted that it had acted in conformity with UN resolutions and under the umbrella of the NATO operation" to protect civilians. "They did not provide more precise information and said that NATO would be in a better position to answer those questions."

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's role in Libya was decisive in crippling Qaddafi's military defenses and providing support for insurgent offensive operations. While its air campaign is not the subject of the panel's inquiry, the report notes that it wrote to NATO "asking it to provide a detailed list of military materiel, including weapons and ammunition, sent by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates or any other country that participated in the NATO operation and information regarding the number and roles of military personnel sent by those countries to Libya since the imposition of the embargo. While NATO acknowledged the receipt of the panel's request for information on 25 January 2012, no answer has been provided to date."

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Diplomats, by trade, are not naturally funny people.

And the lofty "permanent representatives," as the most senior U.N.-based ambassadors are called, are often among the least funny.

They can come across as a bit too earnest, overly confident, even pompous, and they are usually pitching a cause that doesn't translate well into snappy one-liners. While they may possess masterful negotiating skills they're rarely quick enough on their feet to parry a lethal jab from a hardened comic. And frankly, how does one offer up a riposte when the national honor has been mocked?

But every season, there they are, lining up for appearances on Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, confident that they can take advantage of a massive audience that could never be reached through a U.N. press conference.

But they commit comedy at their own peril.

Ask Switzerland's U.N. ambassador Peter Maurer, who got skewered by the Daily Show's faux news reporter John Oliver over his country's neutrality during World War II. ("Mr. Ambassador, is that neutral anger, or real anger?") Or Nassir al-Nasser, Qatar's then U.N. ambassador, who got visibly tense when Oliver challenged his pronunciation of "Qatar" and asked him what his country was doing to de-stabilize the Middle East. ("I'll just pause now to gauge the tension. Yep, that's tense; that is very tense indeed.")

Then there's the big screen, where the South Park creators have made a habit of lampooning U.N. officials or diplomats, including Hans Blix, the former U.N. weapons inspectors, who was thrown into a shark tank by Kim Jong Il in Team America: World Police and torn to pieces for a laugh.

But you get the point.

No one is a choicer prey for a comic than a diplomat, particularly one that speaks with a foreign accent, represents a country with a funny name, and can't take a joke.

But not everyone falls victim.

Remember how the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, playing Ali G coaxed the former Egyptian U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali -- "the geezer" he called him -- to say, and spell out, the French word for human excrement -- "merde." But Boutros Ghali prevailed by playing along, offering his opinion on the funniest language -- "maybe Arabic" -- and patiently explaining why Disneyland can't become a U.N. member: "it's not an independent state."

Susan Rice emerged relatively unscathed in her bout with Stephen Colbert, but not before he got in a zinger about the effort to contain Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs. "Excuse me for interrupting you, but I enjoy it," Colbert said. "Iran is still working toward a nuclear weapon. [North] Korea got their nuclear weapon. I'm just as scared of both of these people. How are we stopping them? I mean, I know sternly worded letters are the bread and butter of the U.N. But maybe we should start typing them in all caps to let them know that we are really angry."

Last week, the Palestinian U.N. envoy, Riyad Mansour, tried his hand at sitting with Oliver, in a skit entitled "Who wants to be a member of the U.N.?" Mansourplayed along with the jokeas Oliver set some "preconditions" for the interview. "First this entire interview must be conducted with the 1967 vocabulary. Is that groovy with you?"

"Groovy? It is agreeable with me. Yes," Responded Mansour.

It moved onto a negotiation over who would control the studio's thermostat. (Thanks to Mondoweiss for the transcript.)

John Oliver: "...is it hot in here?"

Riyad Mansour: "It's fine."

John: "So you're not hot? Because I'm definitely hot."

Riyad: "I am not."

John: "OK, look, Ambassador, I think before we do anything, we are gonna have to come to a provisional status agreement on the temperature in this room."

Riyad: "If you want to lower the temperature, it's fine with me."

John: "But who's going to control the thermostat?"

Riyad: "The thermostat ... should be shared by all of us."

John: "Don't even think about dividing this thermostat."

Riyad: "We will not divide the thermostat, but it should be accessed by all those who cherish it and think that it is a holy place that should be accessed to everyone."

John Oliver [voiceover]: "After three and a half hours of laborious negotiations, we finally came to an agreement."

John: "We agree that at an unspecified time in the future, we will announce a summit to discuss the possibility of discussing a negotiation towards an agreement on temperature. Yes?"

Riyad: "Yes."

John: "Shake hands for the camera. Thank you, Ambassador, this is a historic day."

Riyad: "Yes indeed."

So, how did Mansour fair for the first half of the program? He remained on message, keeping the focus on Palestine's bid for U.N. membership. And he didn't lose his temper. It helped that Oliver went a little easy on him, avoiding any awkward questions about suicide bombers or rockets from Gaza. So, let's see how he did in the game show portion of the interview.

John: "Hi Riyad where are you from, Riyad?

Riyad: "I'm from Palestine."

John: "Palestine? I've never heard of that. Ok, so question number one: What does U.N. stand for?

Riyad: [Long pause] "United Nations."

John: "That's correct. That's correct, Ryad, Congratulations. That's great. So, how do you think it's going so far?

Riyad: "We're doing good."

John: "Ok... It's the bonus round. You've come all this way. Now do you take what you've won so far ... or do you take what's inside the mystery box"

Riyad: "I take what's inside the mystery box."

John: "He's going to go for the mystery box. Ok good luck. [Opens box and removes a card with the verdict.]

John: "Riyad, oh I'm sorry it's a veto from the U.S."

Riyad: "If we're vetoed once well come back again."

John: "That's the spirit. He'll come back again, next time."

Indeed, if there's a comic willing to poke fun at him, he probably will.

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She called him duplicitous.

He said she needed to watch her "expletives" and behave a bit more Victorian.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and her Russian counterpart, Vitaly Churkin, have been slinging insults at each other as their governments have sharply diverged over crises from Libya to Syria.

So what does Rice really think of her big power sparring partner?

"Look, we've had a little fun," she said, recalling how she once projected an image of Churkin's face inside the head of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas character on the wall of the Security Council. "On a personal level, I think I am not ashamed to say [we] have a lot of fun together. We fight, we laugh and sometime we're in agreement and sometimes we're not."

In recent weeks, the American and Russian envoys have mostly been fighting over their sharply diverging approaches to Syria, where the U.S. is supporting an Arab plan to nudge President Bashar al-Assad from power, and Russia is backing its own competing initiative that would preserve a role for the Syrian leader in any political settlement.

On Monday night, Foreign Policy's editor in chief, Susan Glasser, AfPak channel editor Peter Bergen and I sat down with Ambassador Rice at an event organized by the New America Foundation to discuss her views on her Russian counterpart, Russia and China's double veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria this past weekend, and her prospects for becoming the countries next U.S. secretary of state -- if President Barack Obama wins reelection.

Here we've compiled a few highlights from the event, starting with a replay of some of the diplomatic wrangling that proceeded Russia and China's historic double veto, which killed off a Western- and Arab-backed resolution condemning Syria's repression of demonstrators and endorsing an Arab League plan for a political transition in Syria.

Rice maintained that the there was a moment when it looked like the council had secured agreement during "roller-coaster" negotiations, only to see China and Russia backtrack. "I thought at a few points it was doomed to fail but "we ultimately…hammered out what we thought was a compromise that could be sold in everybody's capitals. We were careful in how we framed that with the press. It was something literally all of us needed to send back for guidance…we all hoped we might be in a position to get a yes after that."

That was not to happen.

Russia's foreign ministry declared the draft unacceptable on Friday morning, privately informing their counterparts that they would propose some amendments. But Moscow only formally presented the amendments to the council as it prepared to hold a scheduled vote on its resolution. A last minute meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Munich on the sidelines of a security conference failed to close the gap. "The amendments that were tabled were widely viewed as not only too late but wrecking amendments, amendments that would have gutted the heart of the resolution," said Rice. "It was clear at that stage that we were at an impasse and it I was equally clear that with the killing intensifying on the ground and reaching the horrific levels that it did on Saturday that there was no way the council was going to do as the Russians had sought which was too delay this vote."

But even in the minutes leading up to the vote, representatives from key Arab and Islamic governments, including Egypt and Pakistan, made their final effort to lessen the blow, pressing China to break ranks with the Russians, according to Rice."Just before the vote, a throng of Arab ambassadors encircled the Chinese ambassador, [Li Baodong], and were pleading with him not to stand with the Russians in vetoing the resolution."

Ambassador Churkin recently told me that as a Russian diplomat it is not easy to ditch close allies, and that Moscow was more loyal to its friends than others. Many in the international community, he said, appreciated Russia's stance. But Rice contended that Russia and China will pay a steep political price for its decision to block the Arab League initiative. "I think you've heard the prime minister of Qatar [Hamad bin Jassim and [Arab League Secretary General Nabil] Elaraby both speak of the damage that they believe Russia has done in vetoing the resolution potentially perhaps, probably giving Assad a license to kill," said Rice. "I do think that when the dust settles and when there's a democratic government in Syria they will not forget recent history anymore than the Libyans have forgotten recent history. It will be a very different landscape that the Russians and Chinese are looking at and they may look back on this…as something they wish they could take back."

"This was the Arab members all together coming to the Security Council for something quite specific, it wasn't the use of force it wasn't sanctions, it was blessing a political transition and I think we certainly thought that was an initiative that was worthy of strong international support and U.S. support in the council," said Rice. "The fact that it was blocked by an ever more isolated Russia and China may in the short term serve to embolden Assad but I think over the…middle to long term will in fact weaken him and embolden the region to stand ever stronger in favor of their goal which is a democratic transition."

In defending its decision to cast a veto, Russia has maintained that it had acted to halt the West from using the Security Council, as it had in Libya, to bring about regime change in Syria. Churkin contends that the West abuses the Security Council in Libya by using a resolution crafted to protect civilians to overthrow an internationally recognized government. Rice disputed that claim.

"First of all, using Libya as an excuse to do the wrong thing on Syria is completely disingenuous. We made very, very clear -- I made very, very clear -- in laying out to the Security Council what this authority would entail. The protection of civilians, as mandated and drafted, in what became Resolution 1973, was going to involve air strikes against [Muammar] Qaddafi's command and control centers,  air strikes against moving columns, air strikes against any asset of the regime that would threaten civilians. We discussed this at great detail and we, in fact, debated language that laid all of that out in great specificity so that countries could not claim that they didn't know exactly what they were granting when passing that resolution," said Rice. "We wanted the council to make a clear eyed decision. If they hadn't supported this it wouldn't have happened…But in voting for it, or not opposing it, the council gave a clear-cut green light. Now there may be some cynical folks who say that perhaps the Russians and the Chinese were trying to give the coalition -- NATO, and Western and Arab powers -- enough room to hang themselves and they're frustrated that that wasn't exactly the outcome. I don't know. But I do know it was very clear what they were voting for and the outcome was one that was potentially foreseen ... although I understand that you have to be somewhat nuanced to see it. But the resolution and the actions of NATO really were genuinely to protect civilians, they were not designed for regime change…What transpired was that, in addition to the NATO air campaign to protect civilians, [there was] growth and transformation of the opposition. They cohered ultimately into a sufficiently capable multi-front force to ultimately topple Qaddafi."

The U.S.-Russian rift over Syria has drawn some comparisons in Washington to the diplomatic paralysis that plagued U.N. diplomacy at the height of the Cold War. Rice challenged that comparison, saying that while the two powers different sharply over important issues, they have worked closely on a range of others. "I don't think…the difficulties we have had in the wake of the Libya vote are necessarily indicative of a return to the Cold War. In so many ways we're past that. In my three years, the council has passed very important and broad-reaching sanctions against Iran [and North Korea]. We have together supported the emergence of an independent South Sudan. We have without rancor or difficulty backed important U.N. missions in Afghanistan and Iraq [among many other issues]. There are going to be issues that are difficult. We've had our share of those of late and they…divide us and even get rancorous. But I don't think is a fair characterization of the body of work that we've been doing over the last several years and I expect will be doing going forward."

Speaking of issues that divide, I asked Rice about the prospects that the Security Council could be used to rally greater economic pressure on Iran. I told Rice that I'd recently asked Churkin if he would consider new sanctions against Tehran and he said: "No chance, no chance, no chance…ever." Asked if Churkin is right, Rice said that it may be difficult to reach agreement. She explained that Russia and China, frustrated that they had imposed U.N. sanctions, were infuriated that the United States and Europe followed up with their own sanctions that in some case harmed their own commercial interests.

"There is a certain logic to their point of view," Rice said."We don't agree with it. But there saying ‘why should we adopt strong sanctions in the council, agree to adhere to them, only to be hit upside the head with a bunch of national measures that we didn't subscribe to? How many times are we going to play this game?'"

So have U.N. sanctions against Iran run their course?

"Never say never," Rice said. "But I would say, barring something unforeseen, I think it will be a little while before there is an appetite for further action" at the United Nations.

Finally, Rice was asked if Obama wins reelection, should we expect to see her serving as his new secretary of state? She said: "I love my job and I think the only person who can answer that question is President Obama. I will do what I am asked to do or what I'm not asked to do. So, we'll see. But it has been an enormous privilege and a whole lot of fun to serve again and to serve at the United Nations, which is never dull and I feel very fortunate to be doing what I'm doing."

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Madeleine Rees, a former U.N. human rights official and the inspiration for one of the heroines in the film The Whistleblower, was wrongfully dismissed from her job with the Geneva-based U.N. Office of the High Commission for Human Rights in March 2010, according to a ruling by the U.N.'s administrative disputes tribunal.

The ruling comes at an awkward time for the United Nations, which has been struggling to determine how to react to last month's release of a major motion picture that recounts one of the darkest periods in modern U.N. history: the story of how U.N. peacekeepers became implicated in the trafficking of eastern European women into sexual slavery in Bosnia.

While Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's administration bore no responsibility for the abuses in Bosnia, it did play a role in firing Rees, who is portrayed in the film by Vanessa Redgrave as one of the most outspoken and courageous defenders of the rights of trafficked women in Bosnia. U.N. officials said her dismissal had nothing to do with her role in Bosnia, but concerned questions about her performance in a subsequent job.

After a round of internal debate, Ban invited the film's director, Larysa Kondraki, to screen the film for an audience of senior U.N. officials and member states at U.N. headquarters.

U.N. officials had hoped to use the event, which would include a panel discussion with the director, to highlight the steps that the U.N. has taken to address the failing in Bosnia.

Ban wrote last month in a letter to the director that he "was saddened by the involvement of the international community, particularly of the United Nations, in the abuses connected with the trafficking of women and their use as sex slaves, as highlighted in the movie." He noted that the U.N. has imposed a "zero-tolerance" policy on sexual misconduct and that he intended to make combating such abuses a priority. "I want to assure you that we shall embrace the challenge your film places before us."

As the U.N.'s top human rights officer in Bosnia, Rees led a fierce internal battle against the U.N.'s top peacekeeping brass to rein in sexual trafficking and to ensure that U.N. blue helmets weren't inadvertently complicit in these crimes by barring them from patronizing brothels where the girls worked. The film recounts her role in recruiting a former Nebraska cop, Kathryn Bolkovac (played by Rachel Weisz), and encouraging her to pursue investigations into the involvement of U.N. peacekeepers in sex trafficking.

Rees left Bosnia in 2006, when she was transferred to Geneva to head up the U.N. Women's Rights and Gender Unit. But she clashed with the new leadership team, including Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, who was appointed by Ban, and her deputy Kyung-wha Kang, a former top Korean diplomat and aide to Ban who was appointed by Kofi Annan in his final months in office.

Rees filed a grievance last year, arguing that she had suffered "irreparable harm" to her professional reputation and career at the U.N. after she was unjustly demoted in 2009 and finally pushed out of her job altogether in March 2010. The U.N. High Commissioner's office denied the charges, saying she had been reassigned to a new job after senior managers voiced repeated concerns about her performance, and that they did not renew her contract after she refused to accept another job she had been offered.

Judge Coral Shaw, a justice in the U.N. Dispute Tribunal, ruled that the U.N. had acted unlawfully in reassigning Rees to a new post, and that the U.N. should rescind the decision as well as its subsequent decision not to renew her contract.

"The judicial procedure is not yet completed, and there may be an appeal -- therefore we can't comment at this point," said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the High Commissioner's office, to Turtle Bay. But he added, "The case has nothing whatsoever to do with the shocking events in Bosnia, as depicted in the film The Whistleblower, and its disingenuous to link the two. The case relates to Madeleine Rees' subsequent position as the Head of OHCHR's Women's Rights and Gender Unit in Geneva."

But specialists say that a series of bureaucratic steps -- including scant public reports on sex crimes and the establishment of a U.N. memorandum of understanding that places greater authority for disciplining peacekeepers in the hands of governments -- have made it increasingly difficult to assess the U.N.'s response to the problem.

"Member states are not reliable enough to do a good job on their own, especially in the early stages of a military investigation," Prince Zeid Raad Zeid al-Hussein, Jordan's U.N. ambassador and a former special advisor on sexual abuse in peacekeeping operations, told the New York Times. "We, the member states, have by and large failed to do what I had hoped we would do."

In recent months, the U.N. has faced a rash of new allegations of peacekeeping abuses. Earlier this month, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica issued an extraordinary apology to Haiti's President, Michel Martelly, for the role of Uruguayan blue helmets in the sexual abuse of a Haitian man in a U.N. base. Mujca said he was personally ashamed of the "criminal and embarrassing conduct of a few" Uruguayans and promised that they would be held accountable for their behavior.

A secret U.S. diplomatic cable, released by Wikileaks, disclosed that U.N. peacekeepers in Benin traded food for sex with underaged girls in Ivory Coast. The peacekeepers were sent back to their country, but little is known about their fate. The U.N. has also repatriated peacekeepers from Sri Lanka, Morocco, and other countries in recent years.

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Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was never a fan of John Bolton, the controversial U.S. ambassador to the U.N. who once suggested the organization would be no worse off if you blew up the top 10 floors of its headquarters. But he kept his feelings to himself … until now.

In an interview with the Financial Times' Alec Russell, Annan said that Bolton was a lousy negotiator. "It was remarkable that for someone who has spent that much time at the State Department, as smart as he was, he wasn't a very effective diplomat, or even a negotiator," Annan told the interviewer.

Annan recalled one moment when he confronted the combative U.S. envoy for bullying people. Annan said he was at a luncheon with Bolton and other U.N. Security Council when Bolton sought to kill off a discussion of some disagreeable matter. "'Uncle Sam is not going to like this,'" Annan recalled Bolton saying, according to the FT interview. "So I said, 'Look, stop going around trying to intimidate people. Let them speak their mind … and you can put your views across, but don't try to intimidate them with Washington and Uncle Sam.' And of course, the Council members were all relieved to hear it."

The antipathy toward Bolton appeared more personal than ideological. Annan recalled George W. Bush and his wife Laura as "wonderful human beings" and said he held no grudge against another hard-liner in the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld. "He made mistakes … some serious mistakes, but we all make mistakes. That doesn't make him worthless as a human being."

The remarks are hardly surprising, given Bolton's frequent criticism of Annan's stewardship of the United Nations. In his memoir, Surrender Is Not an Option, Bolton mocked Annan's staff for having "floated the notion that he was a "secular pope.'"

"Being a Lutheran, I didn't even believe in religious popes, and I was absolutely determined there weren't going to be any more 'secular popes' on the 38th floor," Bolton wrote. The U.N. secretary-general's office is located on the U.N.'s 38th floor, though the office is vacant until the renovation of the U.N. headquarters is completed. Bolton did not respond to phone and email requests for comment on Annan's remarks.

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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's unbridled pro-Americanism has helped win over an Obama administration whose top officials once viewed him as weak and uninspiring, thus clearing the way for a likely second five-year term as leader of the United Nations, according to diplomats and previously unpublished U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks.

The U.S. communications show how Ban has secured the support of the full spectrum of Washington officialdom, from the most conservative Republican critics of the U.N., including John R. Bolton, who famously sneered that the U.N. could lose 10 top floors without missing a thing, to the Democrats' most vocal champion of multilateral diplomacy, Susan E. Rice, by delivering consistently on American priorities.

The confidential cables, obtained by Turtle Bay in partnership with the Washington Post, detail Ban's private exchanges with American diplomats from his 2006 election campaign through late 2009, when he began quietly building support for a second term. They show that if there has been any unifying thread of U.S. attitudes toward the secretary-general, it has been Washington's appreciation for his pro-Americanism.

When Ban first approached the U.S. Embassy in Seoul in 2006 to gauge support for his bid to become secretary general, U.S. officials had clear reservations. While acknowledging Ban was a "consummate diplomat," embassy officials expressed their concern that the South Korean foreign minister had neither held a job outside the Korean Foreign Ministry nor managed a substantial re-structuring of a large institution, according to a July 2006 cable.

But "on one credential we have no doubt," according to that assessment by the U.S. embassy in Seoul, Korea: Ban was unswervingly pro-American and could be counted on to offer a sympathetic ear when the U.S. came looking for something. "When we need something from the South Koreans -- ranging from sending Korean troops to Iraq to resolving bases issue for USFK [U.S. Forces Korea] -- we turn to Ban," according to the cable, classified by then U.S. ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow. "He has always been sympathetic and helpful. We have no doubt Ban's relations with the USG would be the same if he were the UNSYG."

Like any secretary-general, Ban has to balance a broad international coalition of political interests, and he has sought to accommodate the demands of other powerful U.N. players, including China and Russia. And he has not always seen eye to eye with the United States -- including in 2007, when he pressed the Bush administration to withhold a plan to impose sanctions on Sudan while he sought to negotiate the entrance of U.N. peacekeepers into the country.

But he has shown a special affection for the United States, proving himself to be among the most pro-American secretary-generals in the U.N.'s history.

In his first official meeting with one of Bush's U.N. envoys, Zalmay Khalilzad, Ban said that while U.S.-U.N. relations had gone through "a difficult period" in recent years, he believed that "without U.S. support for the U.N., nothing happens," according to a May 2007 cable. Ban went on to offer Khalilzad his services in trying to persuade skeptical countries to back Kosovo's independence drive, an initiative that was also backed by Britain and France. Ban assured that "he was ready ‘to assist the effort in any way possible.'"

Ban recognized that his effectiveness could be tempered if he was seen as too close to the Americans. In October 2007, he sought out Chinese support for a visit by his special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to Burma, a trip the U.S. also favored. But he encouraged Khalilzad at a lunch to "keep a lower profile on pressing for the November 1 date while this plays out. Otherwise, he will seen as doing the U.S.'s bidding he said," according to the cable.

Obama's national security team was initial cool to Ban. During then Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, a top foreign-policy advisor, Samantha Power, spoke disparagingly of Ban, characterizing his handling of the Darfur crisis as "extremely disappointing," in a Frontline interview. Ban ‘looks to be adopting the persona of many of his predecessors in that job, which is to be more of a secretary than a general. Darfur needs a general. Not a military general, it needs a diplomatic general, a political general, a moral general. It doesn't need a secretary."

"Is that all there is?" she told the New Statesman, a British magazine, before Obama was elected. "Can we afford to do without a global figure, a global leader?" U.S. officials have insisted that Power's comments do not reflect the views of the current administration, in which Power serves as a White House advisor on multilateral issues.

Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is said to have initially found Ban uninspiring, but she has been careful not to criticize him publicly. Before her current posting, Rice served in the Clinton administration, which had engaged in a bruising, and politically costly, campaign to block former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali from serving out a second term. She did not want a repeat, and did not want to do anything to weaken the U.N. chief at a time the U.S. was seeking to reengage with the United Nations, according to U.N.-based diplomats.

On June 29, 2009, India's U.N. ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, in a private meeting with Rice, voiced concern about articles in the United States and Britain that sharply criticized Ban's tenure. "Rice said the criticism had not come from the U.S. government; it was not helpful for the function of the U.N. We don't need a lame-duck secretary general, said ambassador Rice; there is too much to get done," according to a July 2009 cable that was previously published by WikiLeaks.

Ban eventually secured Rice's backing as he proved supportive on issues the Obama administration cared about. In May 2009, Ban agreed under prodding from Rice to reject a call (by a U.N. board of inquiry he had commissioned) to carry out a far-ranging investigation into alleged excesses by Israel and Hamas during the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. On Iran, Ban has been equally accommodating, publicly criticizing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and privately sending tough messages to the Iranian regime.

According to one cable, he even urged the Americans to go it alone in addressing Iran's nuclear threat if efforts by the permanent five members of the Security Council, plus Germany, continued to stall. "The SYG said it is good to continue with the P5-1 structure for now, but if its effectiveness wanes, the U.S. should be prepared to take the reins," according to the confidential June 2009 cable.

Despite the Obama team's initial misgivings about Ban, they have since come around, recognizing a diplomat generally deferential to American demands who sincerely believes in the virtues of U.S. leadership. U.N.-based diplomats say that Obama himself indicated during a White House meeting in March that he would support Ban's bid for a second five-year term at the U.N. when his term expires later this year.

"First of all, he hasn't declared his candidacy nor have we declared our view," Rice told reporters earlier this month. "But I will say that the United States has worked very constructively and effectively with the secretary-general on a range of issues and we have certainly welcomed and supported his strong leadership on Libya, Cote d'Ivoire, and other issues of late -- and we have a good working relationship with him."

Ban is as much a product of the American century as any American national figure. During the Korean War, Ban and his family were displaced by the North Korean invasion of the south, and forced into a life of hunger and destitution, surviving on U.S. food donations. Among his most cherished memories is a student visit to Washington, memorialized in a class photo with John F. Kennedy. As a diplomat, he served three tours in the United States; as foreign minister, Ban vigorously pressed his government to support the United States, including by participating in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 alongside its historic military ally. When U.S. forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it was Ban who sent a personal note to the State Department applauding the act.

"Ban understands completely American people, values and government. More important, he is naturally sympathetic to all things American," according to one July 2006 cable. "This is quite typical of well educated Koreans of his age. Their formative experience was the Korean War, and they remain convinced that the U.S. is a benign power, with shared ideals and goals for the region and the world."

Ban also recognized the importance of the United States in his own professional advancement. As he campaigned for U.N. chief in 2006, Ban informed U.S. diplomats that "all interlocutors assessed that the most important voices were from the United States and China." But he feared that China would not make an explicit endorsement, instead taking the position that any one of four East Asian candidates "were qualified and acceptable," according to the July 2006 cable. "Ultimately, Ban opined, the race would hinge on the position of the United States and China. In a July 18 conversation, he for the first time voiced concern that, if the U.S. stayed non-committal much longer, his candidacy could falter," according to the cable.

This time around, Ban appears to have locked in support, not only from the United States, but from China, Russia, and other key Security Council members. A phrase the Americans used back in July 2006 to describe Ban's rise rings true today. "A consummate diplomat, Ban finds himself at the top of his chosen career largely because of his ability to get along with others."

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The new Republican-controlled House leadership sent a clear message that it intends to place the United Nations at the center of its foreign policy mission, stepping up scrutiny of U.N. spending, setting conditions for continued U.S. financial support, and casting a spotlight on the shortcomings of the U.N.'s human rights council.

The new chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-FL), arranged for the hearing to begin with a group of prominent critics describing the U.N.'s failings.

Lethinen, who had traveled to Florida to tend to her ill mother, did not attend the long-anticipated session. But in a prepared statement read by Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH), who chaired today's session in her place, Lehtinen vowed to reintroduce legislation that "conditions [U.S. financial] contributions -- our strongest leverage -- on real, sweeping reform, including moving the U.N. regular budget to a voluntary funding basis. That way, U.S. taxpayers can pay for the U.N. programs and activities that advance our interests and values, and if other countries want different things to be funded, they can pay for it themselves."

Lehtinen also pledged to conduct new investigations into allegations of corruption and mismanagement at the U.N. and to insure its interest align with American foreign policy goals. "U.S. policy on the United Nations should be based on three fundamental questions: Are we advancing American interests? Are we upholding American values? Are we being responsible stewards of American taxpayer dollars?," according to her opening statement. "Unfortunately, right now, the answer to all three questions is ‘No.'"

Ros-Lehtinen's funding proposal echoed a similar plan put forward by John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush Administration, to make funding to the U.N. multibillion administrative and peacekeeping budgets entirely voluntary. The U.S. is currently responsible for paying about 22 percent of the U.N. administrative budget, and about 27 percent of the U.N.'s peacekeeping costs. The initiative is not supported by the Obama administration, which suspects it would garner little support in the 192-member organization and isolate Washington at a time when it is seeking to mend its diplomatic relations with foreign governments.

Today's hearing included testimony from four U.N. critics, including Brett Schaefer, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Robert M. Appleton, a former U.N. anti-corruption investigator, and two supporters of the United Nations, Peter Yeo, a former Democratic staffer on the House foreign affairs committee who works for the U.N. Foundation, and  Mark Quarterman, a former U.N. lawyer who served as chief of staff into last year's U.N. probe into the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

It touched on many of familiar political hot button issues -- including concerns about corruption associated with U.N. development programs in outlaw regimes -- that had largely receded from political discussion about the U.N. in Washington during the first years of the Obama administration. Democratic and Republican representatives also raised concern about the large number of resolutions adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council's that criticize Israel's rights record.

Yeo defended the U.N.'s role in advancing U.S. foreign policy objectives, citing the U.N.'s organization of a U.S.-backed independence referendum in South Sudan, and its support of democratic elections in Ivory Coast, where the U.N. has energetically pressed the country's defeated incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, to step down from power. He also cited the passage last year of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran; U.N. support for the U.S.-backed political transition in Afghanistan; and the U.N.'s struggle to "stabilize and reconstruct earthquake shattered Haiti, a country with close ties to America."

"The U.N. is not a perfect institution, but it serves a near perfect purpose: to bolster American interests from Africa to the Western Hemisphere and to allow our nation to share the burden of promoting international peace and stability," he said.  "We must pay our U.N. dues on time, in full, and without threats of withholding our contribution. When we act otherwise, we send a strong and provocative signal that we are more interested in tearing down the U.N. than making it better."

In response to calls by Ros Lehtinen to withhold funds to the UN, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Bloomberg News last week that he would travel to Washington in the near future to persuade Congressional leaders to maintain financial support for the United Nations. "I think their priorities and my priorities are the same," he told Bloomberg. "The only complaint they may have is the lack of much faster progress than they might have expected."

Ban's effort to promote the U.N. cause was not helped by Richard Falk, a U.N. special rapporteur, who claimed in a post published on his personal blog that the United States engaged in "an apparent cover-up" of the facts behind the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Falk also faulted the U.S. media for being "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an Al-Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials."

In response, U.S. ambassador Susan E. Rice condemned Falk's remarks as "so noxious" he should be ousted from his U.N. job. "Mr. Falk endorses the slurs of conspiracy theorists who allege that the September, 2001, terrorists attack were perpetrated and then covered up by the U.S. government and media," she said.

Addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva today, Ban also blasted Falk, noting that the controversial American rights advocate was appointed by the council itself, and that he has no authority to fire him.  "The council decides whether they continue their jobs," he said. But he said "I want to tell you, clearly and directly: I condemn this sort of inflammatory rhetoric. It is preposterous -- an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in that tragic attack."

"Let us be frank. This body has come under criticism from various quarters," Ban continued. "For the human rights council to fulfill its mandate, it must be seen as a place ruled by bias or special interests. It cannot be a place that targets some countries, yet ignores others. It cannot be a place where some members overlook the human rights violations of others so as to avoid scrutiny themselves."

Ban came under fire from Appleton, a former U.N. investigator who led some of the most aggressive anti-corruption investigations ever at the United Nations. Appleton claimed that the U.N's ability to effectively investigate corruption has been undermined by Ban and his top advisors. "I am often asked why there is no will in the organization to pursue such cases, or address them when misconduct is identified," he said in prepared statement. "The short answer is that investigations that uncover fraud and corruption bring bad news, and bad news is not welcome news. The approach of the leadership of the organization is to minimize such issues, and keep them from public view."

Appleton, who was selected twice by the U.N.'s chief oversight official to run the U.N.'s internal investigations, had his appointment blocked by Ban's office on a technicality. Ban's advisors defended the move on the grounds that no female, or non-American, nominees were included on a short list of candidates. Appleton has since filed a grievance with the United Nations on the grounds that he was denied the job because he was an American male.

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Last week, Arizona's Republican governor Janice Brewer accused the Obama administration of subjecting U.S. immigration law to U.N. review, saying it was an example of "internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."

But Obama is hardly the first American president to consult the United Nations. In fact, Republican administrations have been subjecting policies on immigration, detention treatment, and a host of other human rights issues to some form of scrutiny by the U.N. and other international bodies for years.

Brewer was protesting the Obama administration's inclusion of a provision highlighting the Department of Justice's efforts to challenge a controversial Arizona immigration law, SB 1070, which expands police powers to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal alien.

Read on

A top former U.N. investigator who was passed over for the top job in the U.N.'s investigations division has filed a grievance before the U.N.'s personnel disputes tribunal accusing Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his top advisors of discriminating against him because he is an American male, and demanding about $1.4 million in damages and wages, according to the complaint.

Robert Appleton, a former federal prosecutor in the United States who once headed a U.N. task force that probed about 300 cases of potential wrongdoing, claimed that Ban's refusal to endorse his nomination for the senior U.N. anti-corruption job on two occasions, primarily on the basis of his gender and nationality, "constitutes a discriminatory practice, directly contrary to the Charter of the United Nations."

The complaint, which was filed Monday in the U.N.'s administrative disputes tribunal, marks a deepening of a political crisis over Ban's handling of the U.N.'s anti-corruption efforts. It will subject the case to a review by U.N. judges who have frequently clashed with the U.N. leadership over its treatment of staff. Last month, the tribunal awarded $700,000 to a former senior U.N. official who contested the U.N.'s refusal to promote him to a more senior job.

The administrative battle comes more than a week after the U.N.'s outgoing chief of internal oversight, Inga- Britt Ahlenius of Sweden, wrote a sharply worded end-of-assignment report that accused Ban of undercutting her independence and interfering with her effort to hire Appleton. The confidential report, which I reported on first for the Washington Post and Turtle Bay, accused Ban of "deplorable" and "reprehensible" behavior. She also accused Ban of leading the U.N. into an era of "irrelevance" and "decline."

Today's filing marks the first time Appleton has weighed in on the matter. Appleton headed the U.N. Procurement Task Force, which conducted a series of aggressive investigations into wrongdoing from 2006 through 2009. The task force's probes have resulted in 17 misconduct findings against U.N. staff and triggered several criminal investigations by federal prosecutors. The task force also cooperated in a federal probe of Vladimir Kuznetzov, a Russian diplomat, who was convicted in 2007 of money laundering in connection with a kickback scheme.

The task force infuriated governments, including Singapore and Russia, whose nationals it targeted. In late 2008, Russia sought unsuccessfully to push for the adoption of a resolution that would have prevented the U.N. from hiring Appleton or any member of a white-collar criminal team. The task force, which was intended to be temporary, was shut down at the end of 2008, but its expertise was supposed to be preserved in the U.N.'s investigations division.

Martin Nesirky, the U.N.'s chief spokesman, declined to comment on the Appleton case, saying "consistent with our practice, it would be inappropriate to comment on a case pending before the Dispute Tribunal." A senior U.N. official, who recently briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said that no political pressure had been applied on Ban to block Appleton's hiring. U.N. officials said the appointment was blocked because Ahlenius had manipulated the recruitment process so that Appleton would get the job.

Angela Kane, the U.N. under secretary-general for management, claimed last month that Ahlenius's account contained "many inaccuracies, misrepresentations and distortions." Ahlenius, she noted, "did not comply with established U.N. rules and policies" designed to ensure the integrity of the recruitment process. "The Secretary-General and his team consider these instruments key to building a modern U.N. that strives for excellence and reflects our diverse membership - including true gender balance.  Indeed, the Secretary-General has appointed more women to senior positions than ever before in the Organization's history."

But another senior U.N. official hinted that there might be other reasons for the U.N.'s decision to reject Appleton, and suggested that he had outlived his usefulness to the United Nations. "There is only one American in the whole wide world who can run the investigations division?" the official said in a recent interview. "I certainly don't believe that."

The U.N. Charter states that the "the paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible." In practice, U.N. secretaries-general have always relied heavily on key member states to recommend candidates for top posts. Many of the top jobs, including the heads of the departments of peacekeeping and political affairs, are generally reserved for candidates from the United States, Britain and France.

The power struggle between Ban and Ahlenius has its roots in an ambiguous mandate that provided her office with "operational independence" but placed it under the authority of the secretary-general, and makes it dependent on the U.N. secretariat for funding. Ban's advisors maintain that while Ahlenius had the authority to propose a shortlist of three candidates for the job, Ban had the ultimate authority to pick the winning candidate.

Appleton's complaint cites administrative instructions that bolster Ahlenius's claim that she had the sole authority to hire her own top advisors. David Walker, a former U.S. controller general who chairs the U.N.'s Independent Audit Advisory Committee, noted that her "operational independence" provides that "the Under Secretary General for Internal Oversight Services will have authority to appoint all staff members whose appointments are limited to service with the office up to the D-2 level." Appleton's post was a D-2 job.

Appleton argues that the U.N. leadership had an obligation under the U.N. Charter and various General Assembly resolutions and staff directives to give him "full and fair consideration" for the job. He cited a 2008 General Assembly resolution saying that employment "should be based on merit, and that no person should be refused employment based upon race or gender or any other impermissible purpose." But Ban issued a bulletin imposing a rule that he be allowed to appoint senior staff in the investigation's division in January 2009, after Ahlenius had selected Appleton for the job, according to Ban and Ahlenius.

"There is no such rule that women be considered for every D2 position...it is a singular effort to operate outside the rule of law for their own political purpose and even more incredibly to do so retroactively," Appleton asserts. The process, according to Appleton's claim, calls into question Ban's top advisors' respect "for the most basic principles of the organization, and the fundamental rule of law. They should be held accountable for these acts."

Appleton also claims that a senior official in the U.N. Office of Human Resources Management made an "inappropriate attempt" to persuade Ahlenius to consider unqualified candidates for the job, including a U.N. staffer who was married to one of the senior official's subordinates, implying a conflict of interest. U.N. official's said that the candidate's spouse was a personnel officer in the U.N. peacekeeping department, not in the Office of Human Resources, and that there was no conflict of interest.

Appleton writes that the protracted hiring process, which played out over more than two-and-a-half years, has caused him financial hardship and damaged his reputation. "The applicant has been subjected to the embarrassment of having his candidacy discussed by the organizations officials in the public media for a continuous and extended period of time, promoting the false perception that the process was not legitimate or transparent; thereby impugning his own character."

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