UNITED NATIONS – An aide to Secretary-General Annan yesterday attempted to quell criticism of U.N. relations with Israel, but according to the American ambassador, John Bolton, the “fundamental problem” has yet to be addressed by the world body.

After more than two weeks, the head of the U.N. political department, Ibrahim Gambari, answered a letter that Mr. Bolton addressed to Mr. Annan. In it, the ambassador expressed concerns that a photograph of the secretary-general standing under a map of pre-mandatory Palestine could imply tacit approval for erasing Israel from the map.

“I don’t detect that we have an answer to [the] fundamental problem yet,” Mr. Bolton told reporters yesterday, shortly after receiving Mr. Gambari’s letter. “I’d like my original questions answered and I don’t think this has happened,” he said, adding, however, that he would like to study the letter further.

Mr. Bolton said he would continue the pressure. “The issue is how is it possible this kind of behavior persists of denying the existence of a member state of the United Nations,” he said. “I have viewed the map question as a potential pivot point to change this anti-Israel culture.”

Israel’s deputy ambassador, Daniel Carmon, told The New York Sun that the issue of the map will be re-examined next year and that Israel remains concerned about several related committees charged with anti-Israel activities, which cost the United Nations more than $3.5 million a year, along with 20 anti-Israel resolutions the General Assembly passes annually.

In yesterday’s letter, Mr. Gambari stopped short of promising that in the next annual event dedicated to “solidarity with the Palestinian people” the map will not be displayed. Instead, he wrote, he has talked to Senegal’s ambassador, Paul Badji, who heads a committee on “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” which organizes the annual event, and was “encouraged” by his response.

While lauding Mr. Badji’s “commitment to address the matter in a manner which I believe will be acceptable to you,” Mr. Gambari disclosed no details in his letter to Mr. Bolton on any future action. Mr. Badji did not return a call from the Sun yesterday.

Mr. Gambari’s letter opens with six paragraphs explaining why Mr. Annan and his aides are not responsible for the event or the displaying of the map, placing the onus instead on the General Assembly. It is “customary” for the secretary-general to take part and address the event, Mr. Gambari wrote. “I might add that your predecessor, Ambassador [John] Danforth, attended and spoke at the same meeting in 2004,” Mr. Gambari added, echoing a similar remark by the Palestinian Arab U.N. observer, Riad Mansour.

Mr. Danforth attended the “solidarity” event as rotating president of the U.N. Security Council. “I never seen or heard of a map without Israel in it,” he told the Sun yesterday. “If I had, I certainly wouldn’t condone it,” he said. “It’s outrageous.”

“Mr. Danforth came into the meeting late, only to give a speech, and then he walked out,” remembers the editor of eyeontheun.org, Anne Bayefsky, who first published the recent photograph of Mr. Annan posing under the map. Comparing Mr. Danforth’s role to Mr. Annan’s, who has participated in the event as secretary-general in each of his nine-year tenure, is a “deliberate smoke screen,” Ms. Bayefsky said. The map, she added, is stored in the offices of the Palestinian rights division, which is answerable to the secretary-general.

A day of “solidarity with the Palestinian people” was mandated by the General Assembly in 1977, when the United Nations was abuzz with anti-Israel sentiment, culminating in the since-rescinded resolution declaring “racist” the national movement that created the state, Zionism. November 29 was chosen for “solidarity” on a day that in 1947 the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the creation of two states in British-mandated Palestine, despite the fact that Arab countries and the Arab leadership in Palestine opposed the partition plan, which was celebrated by the Zionists.

The map in question shows Palestine prior to the declaration of Israel, which derived its legitimacy, among other sources, from the November 29 resolution. In 1981 the committee that was created along with several other Turtle Bay organs to address Palestinian Arabs gripes decided that “the map and a flag of Palestine as it existed in 1948 should be displayed inside the conference room,” Mr. Gambari wrote to Mr. Bolton, and the practice “remained unchanged ever since.”

Mr. Gambari wrote Mr. Annan was “grateful” to Mr. Bolton and others who have drawn his attention “to the unfortunate impression that displaying [the map] could give, namely that the United Nations favors a replacement of Israel by a single Palestinian state.” Both the General Assembly and the Security Council, he noted, are “on record” calling for an independent Palestinian Arab state “alongside” Israel.

Displaying at the United Nations a map that erases Israel, Mr. Gambari acknowledged, “has acquired a new and very troubling connotation,” after the speech by President Ahmadinejad of Iran, who has called to “wipe Israel off the map.” Mr. Annan has “made clear his “strong disapproval of such remarks,” Mr. Gambari wrote.