UNITED NATIONS -- Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann remembers the tension he felt July 5 as a private jet carrying him and the ousted Honduran leader, who was bent on reclaiming his office, attempted a bold landing at the Tegucigalpa airport.

D'Escoto, president of the United Nations General Assembly, doubted he would survive the flight. ``I thought that plane was going to be shot down,'' he said. Scoffing at the notion of bravery, he added: ``I am the chickenest!''

For this 76-year-old Catholic priest turned diplomat, flanking a president deposed in an early-morning coup, illustrates a new kind of U.N. leadership: one that takes stands and chooses sides. He deliberately uses his position to represent developing nations in the face of global power and says efforts by ``empires'' to sideline him failed.

But for his critics, that flight with the ousted Manuel Zelaya -- barred from landing after the military blocked the runway -- was a display of showmanship rather than diplomacy. So as his one-year term as head of one of the world's most important diplomatic bodies ends Tuesday, d'Escoto is praised by traditionally sidelined nations, and widely criticized for using his post as a political tool for the left.

He has backed Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, blasted Israel for practicing ``apartheid'' against Palestinians, and takes pride in being the Nicaraguan foreign minister who once took the United States to the World Court -- and won.

`LOVE AND RESPECT'

``Many people feel love and respect for me,'' he told The Miami Herald. ``I took the U.S. to the World Court. People look up to that.''

But critics say that admiration is not universal.

``In a region marked by huge ideological rifts, he planted himself to one side of that rift and contributed more to the polarization,'' said Peter Hakim, president of the InterAmerican Dialogue, a Washington, D.C., think tank. ``It wasn't very constructive.''

Florida Rep. Connie Mack, ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, had even sharper words.

``D'Escoto has supported the Castro brothers and helped Hugo Chávez spread his Bolivarian Revolution,'' Mack wrote in an e-mail to The Miami Herald. ``D'Escoto's actions and his support for these thugocrats are simply irresponsible and reckless.

``He will not be missed.''

D'Escoto was born in Los Angeles, raised in Nicaragua and studied journalism at Columbia University. As a priest, he embraced liberation theology, a movement that seeks to increase and sometimes politicize the church's involvement in struggles for social reform and human rights.

A devoted Sandinista, he was Daniel Ortega's foreign minister from 1979 to 1990, when the U.S. backed the contra rebels in the war-wracked Central American nation.

OPPOSING THE U.S.

In 1985, he went on a hunger strike for two months to protest U.S. military intervention in the region. Support for the contras landed the United States in The World Court, which in 1986 ruled that the U.S. government violated international law and should pay reparations to Nicaragua.

D'Escoto was ultimately suspended by the Vatican for his political activities, but he said he remains a priest.

D'Escoto became president of the United Nations General Assembly a year ago, despite suffering from Meniere's disease, an inner-ear disorder that upsets his balance. He said he thought his bouts with vertigo would be disruptive, but he accepted the nomination because he did not think he would be chosen.

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