Race for U.N. Chief Said Still Open

By Nick Wadhams
September 27, 2006
The Washington Post
Original Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092700374.html

UNITED NATIONS -- The Indian candidate for U.N. secretary-general said that the race to succeed Kofi Annan could well be all over if the current front-runner again does well in the next informal poll of the U.N. Security Council.
Shashi Tharoor, a novelist and senior U.N. official, acknowledged Tuesday that South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon was the man to beat. The next informal poll is on Thursday, when the 15 Security Council members will vote to either encourage, discourage, or give no opinion to each of the seven candidates.
Ban led the first two informal polls, the last with 14 votes in favor and only one against. Tharoor placed second in both polls, the second time with 10 favorable votes, three unfavorable and two of no opinion.
I think it's still very early days in terms of intentions, Tharoor said in an interview, though he added: If (Ban) consolidates his position in the next ballot, then of course it could well be all over or close to it.
Despite Ban's strong support, Tharoor said he believed the race was far from over. The Security Council must choose a candidate and then pass the name to the U.N. General Assembly for approval, which has traditionally been granted with no debate.
I'm still second in the fray and that counts for something because ultimately I think many members of the council would like to see a choice, Tharoor said.
The polls are conducted in secret, though some diplomats had wanted the next one to include colored ballots to indicate whether the candidates get votes for or against from any of the five veto-wielding members of the council _ Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
However, two U.N. diplomats said Tuesday that Britain had balked at that idea during a meeting to discuss how to conduct the next poll. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because the results of the meeting were private.
One of the diplomats said Britain didn't want the colored ballots because two of the candidates _ Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and former Afghanistan finance minister Ashraf Ghani _ had only just entered the race and had not been through the earlier polls. They should be extended the courtesy of a standard straw poll, the diplomat said.
The other diplomat said that Britain did not want Ban to get so much support that other candidates would be dissuaded from joining the race. Britain believed that the colored ballots could do just that, the diplomat said.
Some other nations want the process of selecting a new secretary-general to be wrapped up by mid-October. Yet many diplomats have said that they want to see more candidates come forward, a process which could take time.
The straw polls can give only a general sense of support and it's possible that when the final voting occurs, a council member will change its vote. Still, it is almost certain that the next secretary-general will be from Asia, according to an unwritten rule that the job should rotate between regions.
The United States has emphasized the secretary-general's responsibility as the chief administrative officer of the United Nations, saying it wants a U.N. leader capable of managing an organization with an annual budget of more than $2 billion.
In a speech Monday, Ban said he wants to focus on diplomacy and leave the day-to-day operations of the U.N. to his deputy. Tharoor said the chief administrative officer role, which is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, would be impossible to avoid.
I don't think a secretary-general can get off the hook on that, he said. The secretary-general is the person who has to run the organization and in the last analysis, is accountable for how the organization is run.
One of the biggest challenges likely to face the next secretary-general will be the continuing violence in Sudan's Darfur region, which has left some 200,000 people dead and displaced 2.5 million people.
Sudan's government has refused to allow the United Nations to take over a poorly equipped and underfunded African Union force, creating a stalemate that some diplomats have said should require direct U.N. intervention.
Tharoor said that Darfur is an atrocity and a blot on the human conscience. Yet he said he could not advocate the U.N. going into Darfur without the Sudanese government's consent.
We're not going to be in the position to make war in Sudan in order to impose peace in Darfur, Tharoor said. The U.N. has no standing capacity of its own, it has to turn to countries to give us soldiers, and there isn't one country on this planet that has offered soldiers for a war with Sudan over Darfur.