As President Putin of Russia was giving voice to anti-American feelings widely held at the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban attended a private dinner Saturday night with prominent Washington and New York power brokers and got a dose of decisively pro-American and pro-Israeli sentiments. The Democratic politicians, New York-based diplomats, Jewish leaders, business executives, and U.N. aides who attended the intimate soirée in Mr. Ban’s honor at the comfortable East Side home of the president of the American Jewish Congress, Jack Rosen, exist in a parallel reality to that of the America bashers at Turtle Bay.

Sentiments like Mr. Putin’s emerge “when you get a former KGB colonel and a billion dollars of oil money,” the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat of California, told Mr. Rosen’s guests.

Mr. Ban’s life could be much easier if, instead of changing the United Nations, he joins the America doubters. But if his actions so far are any indication, he is not ready to do that just yet.

On Friday, in a revolutionary move, Mr. Ban named an American, Lynn Pascoe, to lead the political direction of an organization that many of its members believe should counterbalance America’s power in the world above all.

Mr. Putin’s screed in Munich on Saturday represented such a belief, though it is rarely spoken aloud. “This is the world of one master, one sovereign,” he said, and called Americans “people who teach us democracy” while dominating the world in a way that “has nothing in common with democracy.”

As the increasingly autocratic Mr. Putin was complaining about American autocracy, Mr. Ban gave Mr. Rosen’s guests a taste of the difficulties he has encountered in managing Turtle Bay, where all 192 shareholders have an equal vote, regardless of the size of their stake in the organization.

The United Nations is “very difficult to manage,” Mr. Ban said, hinting at the mutinous mood he encountered last week when he returned from an 11-day trip to Europe and Africa.

Several Western European countries, Pakistan, Egypt, and India — all ostensibly American allies — as well as less friendly countries have been increasingly vocal in opposing Mr. Ban’s proposed changes to the U.N. structure. Many believe that the long expected appointment of Mr. Pascoe as head of the political department has helped to stoke the opposition’s fires.

While the secretary-general’s aides now say several of the principal countries in that opposition have softened since Mr. Ban’s return, last week’s mood may be an indication of things to come. What will happen if the United Nations takes a more American-friendly political direction on issues related to Russia-protected Iran, or China-allied Sudan?

Senator Clinton’s top national fund-raiser, Alan Patricof, told Mr. Ban on Saturday that many before him have made empty promises to pressure Khartoum, but villagers in Darfur are still being slaughtered. According to several sources present at a meeting in Addis Ababa last week, Mr. Ban told President Bashir that he would condone no more “unfulfilled promises.”

On Saturday night, Mr. Ban said of Iran, “They have to convince us that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.”

The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, remarked on the change of tone in Mr. Ban’s U.N. statements. In the days of his predecessor, Kofi Annan, statements on Israel always had to be artificially “balanced,” Mr. Gillerman said.

And the South Korean ambassador to the United Nations, Choi Young-jin, spoke bluntly of a Korean-American-Israeli bond, comparing the mortal nuclear threat to his country from its northern neighbor to the one Israel faces from Iran.

It will be difficult for Mr. Ban to maintain the amity with Israel and America that was so palpable on Saturday night. While the newly formed U.N. Security Council approved the Korean War in 1950 at a rare moment when the Soviet Union was absent, it is hard to imagine any America bashers these days dropping out of the one arena they dominate.

So how can Washington counter a decisive number of countries represented at Turtle Bay that are attempting to pull Mr. Ban away, and which, like Mr. Putin, see America as a tyrant, intent on destroying global democracy and seizing the world’s resources?

One guest at Saturday’s dinner, Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat of New York and a Korean War veteran, told Mr. Ban, “I’ve been to parts of Korea that you’ve never seen.” Because of Mr. Rangel and his comrades, South Korea is now much more democratic than many of its neighbors, and significantly more market-oriented than most Western European countries — and it plays baseball to boot.

Mr. Ban’s background is far more promising than that of some of his predecessors — an Austrian Nazi, an Egyptian Nasserite, and, more recently, a Ghanaian diplomat whose whole career was spent at Turtle Bay.