Guess Who's Coming to Dinner at the White House?
UNITED NATIONS — In a coda to the just-concluded final and most vicious act of a Turtle Bay power play, all the protagonists sat down Tuesday night for a dinner at the White House, with the president and first lady as hosts.
Guests at the dinner included Secretary-General Annan and his wife, Nan; Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown and his wife, Trish; and the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and his wife, Gretchen. A small, select group of Washington A-listers rounded out the extras.
"Oh, the passive-aggressiveness in that room," one U.N. observer, who was not invited to the dinner, said.
"Nobody sang ‘Kumbaya,'" Mr. Bolton told a reporter who asked if peace was made between the diners as they broke bread together. And from all evidence, the guests indeed avoided throwing silverware at each other. "The families were there," Mr. Bolton told The New York Sun by way of explanation.
Mr. Annan yesterday told a visitor — a former Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom — that during the dinner he talked mostly about ways to improve America's relations with the United Nations, Mr. Shalom told the Sun.
But one day after Mr. Bolton had announced his resignation as ambassador, no one could completely avoid Topic A.
The Washington doyenne Sally Quinn, a guest at the White House dinner, compared Mr. Bolton's new situation to that of her husband, Ben Bradlee, a former Washington Post editor. "She said, ‘I hear you are a lot like my husband now,'" Mr. Bolton told the Sun. "Forgotten but not gone."
Indeed, the struggle that pitted the outgoing secretary-general and deputy secretary-general against Mr. Bolton — whose term will end once the current Senate adjourns for the holidays, but no later than January 4 — will be remembered long after all three leave the United Nations.
The farewell presidential dinner had been planned weeks earlier, long before the final act of the drama played out Monday. Eighteen months earlier, when President Bush announced that he would appoint Mr. Bolton as U.N. ambassador during a Senate recess, U.N. old-timers and their Washington cheerleaders were aghast.
Violating U.N. traditions and rules forbidding interference in national politics, Mr. Malloch Brown openly attacked Mr. Bolton in speeches across America. Mr. Malloch Brown's landlord and benefactor, the billionaire George Soros, financed a Rhode Island ad campaign meant to defeat Mr. Bolton — which ended in success when Senator Chafee finally stopped Mr. Bolton's nomination from coming to a vote.
Mr. Bolton laughed yesterday when asked if he would consider working for the incoming secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, at the United Nations. "I don't expect to be offered, and if offered, I would not accept," he said finally.
