It looks like it could be a real train wreck. It’s a basic clash over who’s in charge: Is it the General Assembly or is it the secretary general?

If you are going to have a Security Council with more members, are you going to reserve 10 seats automatically on all these bodies? That would mean all these bodies would have to be pretty...

I think there is a real worry in Washington that if one of the criteria (for membership on the human rights council) becomes the ratification of human rights treaties, that the U.S. will have a...

Instead of the bull in the china shop, Bolton’s more like the little boy who is audacious enough to say the U.N. has no clothes,

I think it is a rather awkward situation and these things are usually worked out quietly. The more we play up this privilege, the more other members are going to dig in. You don’t necessarily...

The idea of having a real transition period makes eminent sense, and most member states would tend to agree in theory. The problem is, can they settle on a candidate by the middle of the...

Even a debate in the council, perhaps at the foreign minister’s level, raises the ante and political tensions in capitals around the world that Iran is not meeting its obligations and appears to be developing...

One gets the impression that other countries are suspicious that the secretary general and his aides are really puppets being manipulated by Washington.

It doesn’t seem that the best time to start reform is when there’s a major political crisis, … In fact, it seems to me he was putting the cart before the horse, because you can’t...

Iranians are very proud and don’t want to become a pariah state like North Korea. I think they would find it very unattractive.

The reforms on the table really get to the meat of the matter, which is changing an institution envisioned for the post-World War II period to work in a very changed world. The challenge now...

These people should have been put under a watch list; to let them creep back into procurement is the height of irresponsibility. Reform, in the end, is really a question of people and you can...

through the back door.