Wow. Supposedly the guy had one (or three) too many drinks and lost his self-restraint at a United Nations retreat in Alpbach, an Alpine resort town. In related news, the people supposedly dedicated to eradicating global poverty spend hold their meetings in an Alpine resort town.

“I know you never liked me Mr. Secretary-General — well, I never liked you, either,” Sha told Ban at a dinner attended by the U.N.’s top brass, according to a senior U.N. official who attended the event. “I didn’t want to come to New York. It was the last thing I wanted to do. But I’ve come to love the U.N. and I’m coming to admire some things about you.”…

Sha continued a lengthy speech, in which he also expressed his antipathy toward the United States. “It was a tribute gone awry,” said a second senior U.N. official who was at the dinner. “It went on for about ten or fifteen minutes but it felt like an hour.” Ban was described as having smiled and nodded awkwardly during the Sha rant, but he allowed the dinner to continue….

Sha’s colleagues, including Catherine Bragg, a humanitarian relief official, tried to approach Sha to persuade him to calm down. But Shaw continued. At one stage, Sha singled out a senior U.N. official, Bob Orr of the United States, and said “I really don’t like him: he’s an American and I really don’t like Americans,” according to the senior official. But he then went on to credit Orr for delivering a commendable speech at the U.N. conference on climate change in Copenhagen, in which Orr praised Ban for taking a courageous stand and laying the groundwork for progress on global warming. “He was right,” Sha said, according to the official.

In other words, Sha only kinda tolerates Orr because he’s a global warming alarmist, unlike most of the American population. But he still doesn’t like Orr.

Here’s how it went down:

The trouble at Alpbach began when U.N. officials arranged for a cocktail reception for senior officials. The organizers asked the U.N.’s senior male officials to mix drinks for their female counterparts, as a symbol of the greater number of top women in the traditionally male dominated organization. Ban acted as one of the main bartenders.

Following the reception and a dinner, top U.N. officials were offered an opportunity to make some remarks. Sha took the microphone and that said that while the “wine affected me a little…I want to say something that’s on my mind,” recalled a senior U.N. official.

That was the point at which the microphone should have been turned off. You never let somebody who’s clearly had one too many drinks continue to talk after saying, “I want to say something that’s on my mind.”

Translated, that means he wants to say something, now that he’s drunk, that he would never say if he were sober. His self-restraint now lifted by the alcohol, he’s going to launch into an embarrassing speech that he’ll regret tomorrow. It’s at that point that you turn the microphone off.

China actually nominated this guy for a top UN economic post in 2007. Considering China’s penchant for saving face on the global stage, I seriously doubt Sha will ever again be nominated for anything of value. In fact, if he stays in his current position for much longer I’ll be shocked.