Somehow the United Nations can’t resist meddling in the American election. In a British television interview aired yesterday, the U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, said that the ouster of Saddam Hussein from Iraq hasn’t made the world any safer. He’d previously described the Iraq war as “illegal.” He might as well be running around with a Kerry-Edwards campaign button on his lapel.

Meanwhile, another U.N. official, the commander of the peacekeeping forces in Haiti, a Brazilian general named Augusto Heleno, blamed comments by Senator Kerry for a recent surge in violence in Haiti that has claimed 50 lives in the past two weeks. General Heleno told Brazil’s state news agency that Mr. Kerry’s comments sympathetic to the former dictator of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had offered “hope” to supporters of Mr. Aristide that he could be restored to power if Mr. Kerry is elected. That hope, the general said, was “completely unfounded.” The general’s comments were picked up by the BBC, and we read about them on Captainsquartersblog.com, a Web site edited by Edward Morrissey.

General Heleno’s warning has, to our mind, more credibility than that of Mr. Annan. General Heleno is in harm’s way in Haiti. The U.N. is now compromised in Iraq owing, above and beyond all other factors, to the bribery scandal in respect of the Oil-for-Food program. The United Nations has less cause to worry about the outcome of the American election than about bringing free elections to the still numerous member states of the United Nations that don’t have them. That may be why there is so much international concern about what happens in ours.