UN chief returns to headquarters, where battles await him 

By Warren Hoge
February 6, 2007
International Herald Tribune
Original Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/06/america/web.0206nations.php

Ban Ki-moon, the new United Nations secretary general, returned to his headquarters on Monday after a two-week working trip to Africa and Europe and ran into dissension over restructuring changes he has proposed and concern at the slow pace of his appointing top officials since taking office on Jan. 1.
Today is probably his first reality check, Dan Gillerman, the ambassador from Israel, said after a two-hour closed-door session in which members of the 192-member General Assembly raised questions about Ban's reform proposals.
To make any change at the UN is something which involves a lot of negotiation, a lot of compromise, and whatever proposal you bring will look totally different after everybody has had a go at it, and we saw the first signs of that today, Gillerman said.
At issue are Ban's proposals to divide peacekeeping, the fastest growing activity at the United Nations, into two departments, and to reshape the disarmament department in a way that many envoys believe downgrades it.
The changes would strike a layman as bureaucratic nuance. But at the United Nations, they fuel a continuing competition between the great powers — which exercise commanding power through the 15-member Security Council — and the General Assembly, where the developing world feels its authority is threatened when its elaborate deliberative procedures are not respected.
Ban angered many ambassadors by saying that he expected to gain rapid approval of his proposals and would delay filling the ranks of top-level management until agreement was reached on his restructuring plan. The approach raised questions about whether Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, understood the easily offended sensitivities of the world he has entered.
We do not think there should be arbitrary deadlines, said Munir Akram, the Pakistani ambassador, who is the chairman of the 133-nation group that speaks for the developing world. We also believe that established procedures should be followed.
Many at the United Nations are unhappy over the delay in top appointments, especially since Ban is the first secretary general whose selection by the Security Council came early enough to give him three months of planning time before he took over.
People had expected that team to be in place by now, said Gillerman. The longer he puts it off, the longer the anticipation and the longer the disappointment.
Alejandro D. Wolff, the acting American ambassador, said that Ban had now decided to delink the appointments of new officials and the agreement on structural changes, and that appointments would be announced within days. Wolff declined, however, to confirm the widespread rumor that B. Lynn Pascoe, the American ambassador to Indonesia, would be the new undersecretary general for political affairs.
Ban used Monday's meeting to introduce the new deputy secretary general, Asha-Rose Mtengeti-Migiro, the former foreign minister of Tanzania. The secretary general has said that Migiro will be in charge of the management overhaul that he has pledged.
Asked how she reacted to critics who have noted the absence of extensive management experience on her resume, Migiro said she had run two government ministries. So I believe I have enough capability to do the managerial work that the secretary general envisages, she said, and maybe I should emphasize that, yes, the United Nations is a big organization, but management does not always have to do with the size of the organization.
If Ban has run into early turbulence at the United Nations, he has succeeded off-premises in combating his reputation for being a wooden public presence. He has leavened his appearances with jokes about the proper pronunciation of his surname, which he says is bahn not ban. I don't want to ban anything, he said at a breakfast meeting of leaders of the New York City business community.
He charmed guests at a December dinner of the United Nations Correspondents' Association by singing Ban Ki-moon is coming to town to the familiar melody about Santa Claus. And he mixed with Bush administration officials and members of Congress gamely wearing a gift cowboy hat at a dinner given in his honor in Washington last month.
The United States, which was frequently at odds with Kofi Annan, the former secretary general, was a strong backer of Ban's candidacy, and Wolff, the American envoy, said it backs his proposals.
You'll have a lot of different views on the details, whether this is the best one or a different approach might be better, he said, but you have 192 members and consensus is not easy to get, so support for the secretary general is the principle that we stand by.