Word: moynihan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week Moynihan was deep in his latest battle, at the U.N. Security Council. There the U.S. faced a concerted Arab effort to enhance the diplomatic status of the Palestine Liberation Organization, further isolate Israel and bedevil American peacemaking efforts...
Early in the week, Moynihan got into a short but sharp verbal tussle with his Russian counterpart. The admission of the P.L.O. delegation, Moynihan protested, showed a "totalitarian" disregard for due process that threatened to turn the U.N. into "an empty shell." Soviet Ambassador Yakov Malik replied: "I agree with the professor, who lectured us that totalitarianism is a terrible thing indeed. But no less terrible is gangsterism." Moynihan had the last, somewhat heavy word: "Totalitarianism is bad, gangsterism is worse, but capitulationism is the worst...
Since he hung up his trademark Irish plaid hat at the U.N. last July, Moynihan has become one of the most jarring diplomats ever to inhabit the towering glass menagerie on Manhattan's East Side. A big (6 ft. 5 in.), bouncy, exuberant man with a cherubic Irish face and a floppy lock of prematurely gray hair, Moynihan, 48, has a well-developed ability to both charm and infuriate. Walking down a corridor, he can pick up a retinue with a nonstop monologue of patter, pontification and wisecracks ("If the U.N. didn't exist, it would be impossible to invent...
When words fail him, which is almost never, Moynihan does not mind making a point peripatetically: he will wander into the Security Council during a debate, walk around, sit down, get up, go out and come back in. "We sometimes feel that he does not take the Security Council seriously," complains one East Asian diplomat...
Some delegates fume at his hit-and-run habit of simply walking out of the Council or the General Assembly after delivering a tough speech and letting his deputies handle the fallout. On one such occasion, Moynihan started to stroll out of the Assembly when Saudi Arabia's voluble Ambassador Jamil Baroody was standing at the speaker's rostrum. "Come back, sit down, perhaps you may learn something," Baroody taunted. Moynihan came to an abrupt halt, wheeled around, sat down and peered up at Baroody with a look of exaggerated attention on his face...