page_title: Kofi Annan
section_title: Relations between the United States and the United Nations
hierarchical_section_title: Kofi Annan / Secretary-General of the United Nations (1997–2006) / Relations between the United States and the United Nations
context_page_description: Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.
  Annan studied economics at Macalester College, international relations at the Graduate Institute Geneva, and management at MIT. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization's Geneva office. He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996. He was appointed the Secretary-General on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council, and later confirmed by the General Assembly, making him the first office holder to be elected from the UN staff itself. He was re-elected for a second term in 2001, and was succeeded as Secretary-General by Ban Ki-moon on 1 January 2007.
context_section_description: Annan defended his deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, who openly criticized the United States in a speech on 6 June 2006: "[T]he prevailing practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable. You will lose the UN one way or another. [...] [That] the US is constructively engaged with the UN [...] is not well known or understood, in part because much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News." Malloch later said his talk was a "sincere and constructive critique of U.S. policy toward the U.N. by a friend and admirer."
  The talk was unusual because it violated unofficial policy of not having top officials publicly criticize member nations. The interim U.S. ambassador John R. Bolton, appointed by President George W. Bush, was reported to have told Annan on the phone: "I've known you since 1989 and I'm telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen in that entire time." Observers from other nations supported Malloch's view that conservative politicians in the U.S. prevented many citizens from understanding the benefits of U.S. involvement in the UN.
caption: Annan with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006
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