By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: March 30, 2011
UNITED NATIONS — A former Nicaraguan foreign minister who once called President Ronald Reagan “the butcher of my people” has been appointed to represent Libya at the United Nations after its delegate was denied a visa, the Nicaraguan government said on Wednesday.
Nicaragua said the former minister, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, 78, an outspoken critic of the United States and a Catholic priest, would replace the Libyan diplomat Ali Abdussalam Treki, who had been unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States.
Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam, defected in late February after denouncing Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi during a Security Council meeting during which he pleaded for international help to save Libya from bloodshed.
The Nicaraguan government of President Daniel Ortega, a leftist who has frequently sparred with the United States and has forged close ties with Colonel Qaddafi, said it sent a letter to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, on Tuesday to inform him of the appointment. Before he defected, Libya’s foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, also notified Mr. Ban. But the United Nations said on Wednesday that it had not received official notice.
In its letter, the Nicaraguan government said that Mr. D’Escoto would “support the Libyan brothers in their battle to ensure respect for sovereignty and self-determination — both of which are being violated by the powerful, who once again threaten the independence and peace of the people.”
But Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said Mr. D’Escoto was not an American citizen — even though he was born in Los Angeles — and was in the country on a tourist visa, which did not permit him to act as the representative of a foreign government. She said he would need to leave the country and apply for a different visa if he were to take up the post.
“I do think it’s curious,” she said, “that somebody who represents seemingly nobody is holding a press conference in a U.N. facility. If he reports to be or acts like a representative of a foreign government on a tourist visa he will soon find his visa status revoked.” Mr. D’Escoto has scheduled his first news conference for Thursday.
A former president of the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. D’Escoto was foreign minister under Mr. Ortega from 1979 to 1990. His tenure included the period when the American-financed contra rebels tried to overthrow Mr. Ortega’s Sandinista government.
The unlikely alliance between Libya and Nicaragua can be traced in part to a kinship between Mr. Ortega and Colonel Qaddafi, diplomats said. Mr. Ortega has said that he sought the Libyan leader’s help in financing his presidential campaigns.
As president of the General Assembly, Mr. D’Escoto did not hold back from making oblique critiques of Washington. In his inaugural speech as president in June 2008, he said that United Nations members had to unite against “acts of aggression, such as those occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
In a radio interview in June 2004 after the death of Mr. Reagan, Mr. D’Escoto called the former president a “liar” and “international outlaw” and accused him of being responsible for the deaths of 50,000 Nicaraguans. “I pray that God in his infinite mercy and goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people,” he said.
The son of a Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States, Mr. D’Escoto has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
Some United Nations diplomats said he was unlikely to help overcome Libya’s status as a pariah. In his previous role at the United Nations, they said, he had shown himself to be viscerally anti-American. Others said he had tamed his anti-Americanism.
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