UNITED NATIONS Brilliant bully? Sizing up Bolton

Opinions are divided on the ambassador's effectiveness.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
UNITED NATIONS -- U.S. Ambassador John Bolton's mission to reform the United Nations is a lot like Hercules' mythical labor to clean a mountain of manure from the Augean Stables, joked a friend while introducing him before a recent speech. The difference for Bolton, she said, is that the animals making the mess are still there.
Recounting the story, Bolton leans his head back and laughs. And laughs, until his face turns red.
"She said it. I didn't," he says.
After four months as ambassador, Bolton is still shoveling hard. Most of his fellow diplomats agree that the blunt-spoken envoy is indeed unconventional. Some call him "a bully," and others say he is "brilliant." But opinion is divided about whether he is effective -- if he is cleaning up the mess, or adding to it.
"He is having a definite impact," said Ambassador Mihnea Motoc of Romania, a temporary member of the Security Council. "Others wish they could do things the same way."
Tactics
But Bolton's methods have often put him at odds with the United States' traditional allies here, particularly Britain, which has worked to broker face-saving compromises.
"Strategically, there isn't that much of a difference between the U.S. and the U.K.," British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said. "The question is one of tactics. The perturbation it will cause to the U.N. system will only increase the divisions within the U.N. and take our eye off reform."
Just as member states were brushing themselves off from the last collision Bolton precipitated -- over an agreement on how to reform the United Nations before the World Summit in September -- the U.S. ambassador is setting up a new showdown.
He has threatened to block the world body's budget for 2006-07 unless diplomats commit to "real reform" by the end of 2005, a year that has seen the organization severely damaged by revelations of corruption and mismanagement in the Iraq oil-for-food program, the disclosure of sexual exploitation by peacekeepers and the United Nation's inability to change itself.
The budget battle prompted Secretary-General Kofi Annan to cancel a trip this month to Asia, and warn that Bolton's gambit could exacerbate the very problems it is meant to solve.
"He has an agenda, and he's pursuing it with a conviction that is uncommon here," said Algerian Ambassador Abdallah Baali, who sometimes clashes with Bolton in the Security Council but considers him a friend. "He's doing it his way, which is not the way we do it at the U.N. We are used to a little more compromise."
It was always expected he would be controversial. Bolton came to the post by the political back door: President Bush appointed him during a congressional recess after it became clear that the battle over his confirmation was going to be a long one.
He's a fighter
The ambassador clearly relishes a fight. He recalled that when he was applying at law firms for a summer job back when he was a young man, one lawyer told him to rethink his desire to be a litigator, saying that most of his interactions every day would be with people who wanted to "rip your clients' lungs out."
"He asked me, 'Is that really what you want to do?' And I thought about it and I said, 'Yeah, that is exactly what I want to do.'"
Bolton is still comfortably contrarian, standing out among sleekly groomed diplomats with his trademark walrus mustache and mop of once-auburn hair, now gray.
He wants to make sure the U.S. message gets across and he doesn't do it softly.
"I think it's important to say clearly what the U.S. position is. ... And I think when you say we hold this position and we hold it strongly, for some people, that is a new experience."
What makes him uncomfortable are the diplomatic niceties. He spends most weekends at his home in Bethesda, Md., not in the U.S. ambassador's residence in the Waldorf Towers, a rambling glorified hotel suite that is anything but homey.
At receptions, Bolton hates to schmooze. Instead he is trying to meet all the U.N. ambassadors one at a time and has seen 121 so far. "Sixty-four to go," he said.
He eschews most diplomatic dinner parties because they start at 8 p.m. -- too late for his 9 o'clock bedtime.
When he does go, he asks the host to change the start time to 7. Some hosts even do. "It's my own social revolution," he said.