Ashdown and Colak submitted reports to the Security Council on Wednesday on the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is routinely done every six months.
Ashdown was quoted by the Sarajevo Dnevni Avaz daily on Friday as saying said that Colak used the speaker's platform in the UN Security Council "to promote the narrow interests of one party and possibly one ethnic group".
The British diplomat claimed that Colak caused great damage to the State of Bosnia-Herzegovina and that this assessment was shared by all members of the Security Council.
In his address to the Security Council, the text of which was made available to the media in Sarajevo, Colak criticised the work of the Bosnian judiciary. Although he mentioned no names, his comments clearly concerned cases such as that of Covic or the trial of Ante Jelavic.
Ashdown said that Colak should have raised those issues before institutions of Bosnia-Herzegovina rather than in New York.
Colak said the purpose of his speech was not to protect Covic but that it was in the interests of his country's progress towards the European Union.
He added that it was beyond dispute that the judiciary in Bosnia-Herzegovina sometimes violated the European Convention on Human Rights by extending the detention of the accused, amending indictments in the course of trials and providing insufficient evidence.