The United Nations expects an improvement in relations with the US this year and believes hostility to the world body in Washington has "peaked", according to a senior aide to Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general.

Mark Malloch Brown, Mr Annan's chief of staff, told the Financial Times: "As someone who takes the pulse of Washington pretty continuously, I do think there's been a peaking of the really visceral rightwing 'destroy the UN' mode and it has pulled back, even among that constituency, to a more moderated 'reform the UN'."