South Asia should unite behind one of its own 
Why doesn't India support the candidature of Jayantha Dhanapala for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations?

Ramesh Thakur 
April 8, 2006
The Hindu
Original Source: http://www.hindu.com/2006/04/08/stories/2006040805091100.htm

KOFI ANNAN's term as Secretary-General of the United Nations comes to an end on December 31, 2006. The search for his replacement has started. The Security Council will vote on the issue before the year's end, and the matter will then go to the General Assembly. The vote in the Security Council is subject to veto by any one of the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). So far the General Assembly has never rejected the candidate recommended by the Security Council. 
By the established principle of geographical rotation, the next Secretary-General should be an Asian. Choosing the best rather than a regional candidate is a wonderful principle. London and Washington would have had more credibility and the moral high ground for this claim had the principle been followed in the choice of the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 
That the general sentiment in U.N. circles is in favour of an Asian is no guarantee the post will go to an Asian. China has indicated strong support for the idea, and of course may veto any non-Asian candidate. But this will not suffice if Asians cannot unite behind one candidate, or at least agree on a common strategy. One such strategy could be to seek general agreement in advance that the choice will be limited to Asian candidates, but as many candidates as desired may be nominated. This would ensure that the candidate is Asian but not imposed on the rest of the world by Asia: everyone gets to choose which Asian candidate becomes Secretary-General. 
Japan, India, and other Asian countries also support the principle of an Asian Secretary-General this time round. So far there are three declared candidates, a South Korean, a Thai, and a Sri Lankan. Others are surely waiting in the wings. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has given group support to the Thai candidate. There is no Northeast Asian counterpart that could campaign for the Korean. But there is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. So why has it not joined forces to provide collective support to Jayantha Dhanapala, the candidate from its own region, especially as South Asia has never had a Secretary-General? 
More importantly, why is India silent on this point? It is passing strange that a country with pretensions to global leadership and major power status fails to demonstrate leadership in its own region, despite dominating the region with over 70 per cent of land area, economic output, and population. 
The reason cannot be fear of giving offence to other countries, their candidates or the region they come from. No South Asian or Northeast Asian can reasonably take offence at ASEAN backing the Thai candidate. Are South Asians really so jealous of each other that they would like all internal candidates to fail and someone else succeed, perhaps even a non-Asian? Outsiders will surely respect South Asia more for mounting a united campaign, even if this does not lead to success. 
Maybe influential policy-makers are hopeful that an Indian candidate will emerge from the process. There is at least one internal U.N. Indian candidate in the minds of some influential world personalities as having the requisite intellectual depth, political skills, sparkling wit, and diplomatic charm for the job. The prospects for this will not be damaged if prior to that stage India had given clear support to Mr. Dhanapala. Such selfless support based on regional solidarity might even help an Indian candidate later in the process should Colombo's campaign run out of steam. The major obstacle to an Indian succeeding Mr. Annan is not Mr. Dhanapala's candidacy but the reluctance of most countries to elect the national of a major power. Otherwise Bill Clinton might have had this post locked up by now. 
India surely does not believe that Mr. Dhanapala lacks credibility as a candidate. He topped the competitive exams in Sri Lanka and had a brilliant career in the foreign service, culminating as ambassador to Washington. That he has failed to generate excitement in Washington circles may prove to be more of an asset than a liability. He has served ten years in the U.N. Newton Bowles, a distinguished Canadian diplomat who was involved with the U.N. in many capacities from its start, notes in his memoir The Diplomacy of Hope that Mr. Dhanapala left a legacy of intellectual rigor and moral commitment as Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament (1998-2003). He is widely known, respected and admired. He is considerate to subordinates and courteous to colleagues. He is a uniter, not a divider. Impressively, his candidacy has drawn support from across the political spectrum in a country that is otherwise as fractiously divided as India itself. The opposition parties in Sri Lanka joined hands with the government on the day that his candidacy was announced. 
Could it be that people in New Delhi have neither forgotten nor forgiven his role in perpetuating the NPT-based nuclear apartheid? The NPT was signed in 1968 and came into force in 1970. Unusually among such international agreements, it required a conference to be held after 25 years to discuss whether to renew the treaty indefinitely or for further fixed periods. The 1995 conference decided to renew the NPT indefinitely, and in doing so enshrined a strong international legal bulwark against nuclear non-proliferation. Mr. Dhanapala was the president of that conference. 
That was over a decade ago. India itself has crossed the nuclear threshold since then, and is busy trying to prove its non-proliferation credentials to remaining sceptics in the U.S. and elsewhere. Policies appropriate for a non-nuclear and anti-nuclear country are less relevant for a self-declared nuclear power. In any case, Mr. Dhanapala was prescient in warning, in his closing speech on May 12, 1995, that the indefinite extension of the treaty should not be construed as a permanence of unbalanced obligations. The conference's unmistakable message was that non-proliferation and disarmament can be pursued only jointly, not at each other's expense. 
The challenge remains: where ASEAN has shown the way, will SAARC follow? And will India provide the necessary regional, continental and global leadership? Mr. Dhanapala may or may not be the best candidate and may or may not succeed in his campaign. I cannot comment on his merits and suitability relative to the other candidates. Regardless, I would have thought his candidacy does deserve Indian support based on regional solidarity. 
(Ramesh Thakur, senior vice-rector of the U.N. University, is the author of The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect, Cambridge University Press. These are his personal views.)