Have any world leaders gotten into physical altercations at the U.N.?

Question

I got to wondering, as I was re-reading a tidbit about Hugo Chavez's anti-American rant at the U.N. a while back, have there been any instances where the leader of one country has gotten into an actual fight with the leader of another country while at the U.N.? For that matter, what would the U.N. as an organization do to world leaders who get into fights while on the premises?

Answer 1

Apart from the famous episode of Nikita Khrushchev pounding is shoe on the podium, I cannot recall any such incident leaked to the press.

However, I can tell you of a particular incident happened in Italy in the 1970s, when then-Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti had to have his Maltese counterpart, Alex Trigona, physically removed from his office by the Carabinieri guards when he got into a verbal argument with him and refused to leave even after he was repeatedly and politely asked to.

Answer 2

It never happens, since the translators and interpreters pretend they didn't hear (or couldn't understand) the offensive remarks and don't translate them into the other person's language.

The time a UN rep said, "Ms. Smeal, there are 'crazy street signs' as far as your retarded children are concerned in more than 200 countries.    Youre going to have to hatch a lot of retards to invade all these countries, but please dont have them wear U. S. insignia -- they don't carry passports"     the deliberations went right on.  Everybody pretended they didn't hear it.

Answer 3

No world leaders have gotten into fights at the UN.  However, ambassadors to the UN have gotten into a few scuffles.