Letter Bomb

Tough talk at the U.N.

When foreign ministers and United Nations ambassadors from 93 Third World delegations concluded a meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 28 by issuing a one-sided anti-American communique, few delegates took much notice. After all, the 21-page declaration had been designed and pushed through by Cuban Foreign Minister Isidoro Malmierca Peoli, hardly an admirer of the U.S., and it repeated the standard litany of Third World gripes about American power. But the reaction of American U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was anything but routine.

Kirkpatrick wrote to leaders of a number of Third World delegations regarded as moderately friendly to the U.S.

She demanded to know how the delegates could have supported "base lies and malicious attacks upon the good name of the United States." Such views, she said, are not "an accurate reflection of your government's outlook. And yet, what are we to think when your government joins in such charges, for that is what you have done in failing to disassociate yourself from them." Kirkpatrick was merely taking the same hard line against anti-Americanism among nonaligned countries laid down by former U.N. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, yet diplomats at the U.N. were atwitter, grumbling that the letter was unmatched in its undiplomatic tone.

The letter is very much in keeping with Kirkpatrick's style at the U.N. Although friends say she is shy and a bit uncomfortable with the social aspects of her job, many of her colleagues consider her "schoolmarmish" and "uppity," as one put it.

Friends and foes alike consider Kirkpatrick's staff inexperienced and inept. In the past, members of the U.S. mission would keep abreast of a nonaligned meeting, quietly emphasize Washington's interests and encourage friendly delegations to exercise restraint. This time, no one from the U.S.

was around to monitor the proceedings.

One angry recipient of the Kirkpatrick letter sniffed that she was like "the absent parent who scolds her child for misbehavior committed in her absence."

Officials at the White House say they were not shown a draft of the letter in advance. Still, as one senior official at State said, "it reflects thinking at the top." Added a White House aide very much at the top: "We don't feel like just sitting there and letting them spit in our faces."

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