Miguel d'Escoto is coming back to haunt Washington. The foreign affairs minister of Nicaragua for eleven years and a Sandinista priest, d’Escoto is now presiding over the 192-member body that is the United Nations General Assembly. D’Escoto has found the perfect pulpit from which to point his finger at the United States once again.

Speaking about the five members of the U.N. Security Council he declared that “their veto power seems to have gone to their heads, to the point where they believe they can just do as they please.”

There is plenty of bad blood. In 1983, Nicaragua accused the CIA of trying to murder d'Escoto, by sending him a bottle of Benedictine liqueur laced with the poison thallium.  It was at a time when then-President Ronald Reagan was backing the Contra rebels who were fighting the Sandinistas, a Marxist-influenced government led by Daniel Ortega. Much has changed since then.

At 75, and despite hearing loss, the Sandinista priest remains combative. More accustomed to slums than the hallowed halls of diplomacy, he wants to refocus the U.N.'s efforts on fighting poverty and climate change. “We are drowning in a quagmire.  We have to get out, otherwise we are heading directly to the extinction of the human species,” d'Escoto told FRANCE 24.  

Miguel d'Escoto, who is also a priest feels that he doesn't have to answer to anyone...at least not any earthly beings.