By Wu Miaofa
Although Kofi Annan's second term as UN secretary-general does
not expire until December 2006, the campaign to replace him is
shifting into high gear.
The Security Council will start discussing candidates for the
job in July, with bidding for the world's most prominent diplomatic
job then expected to take center stage.
The new secretary-general is supposed to be first nominated by
the Security Council, which means that he or she must get the
support of nine votes of the 15 members, including the five
veto-holding permanent members, before the appointment is confirmed
by the UN General Assembly.
The campaign for UN secretary-general presently focuses on two
questions. From which region should the candidate come? And will
the short-listed candidates be acceptable to UN members, notably
the five permanent members of the Security Council China, France,
the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States?
John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations, said in
February that the continent the next secretary-general comes from
should not matter. According to Bolton, what matters most is
whether the next secretary-general is a competent diplomat. His
remarks were soon echoed by British UN Ambassador Emyr Parry and
many influential voices in the Western media.
Reading between the lines, Bolton's statement rejects the
understanding that a diplomat from Asia should be elected to the
post of the UN secretary-general.
Thirty-four years have passed since an Asian, U Thant of
Myanmar, stepped down from the post of the UN secretary-general.
The long interval has seen six people from Europe, Latin America
and Africa holding the secretary-general's post.
Both common sense and principle require that a competent Asian
diplomat be elected to the UN top post. This accords with the rule
that the post be held by people from different regions in rotation,
as well as tallying with the common ground shared by many UN
members.
China and Russia, two of the five Security Council permanent
members, have made their stance clear an Asian be chosen for the
job.
The US argument that "diplomatic competence" comes first and
foremost merely veils the true intention of Washington and its
allies their desire to handpick the next UN chief.
True, the UN's top position should be occupied by a diplomat of
seniority and competence. But how should this "competence" be
defined? In the view of this author, Bolton's definition of
"competence" simply means whoever would be prepared to dance to
Washington's tune. Otherwise, he or she would be simply written off
as a "mediocrity."
For instance, Tanzanian diplomat Salim Ahmed Salim, who was
recommended by the Organization of African Unity for the post of UN
secretary-general, was repeatedly blocked by the United States in
1981.
Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, when seeking
his second term in the mid-1990s, had to quit the race because
Washington showed him the red card.
Both Salim and Boutros-Ghali were gifted diplomats. However,
their political values did not tally with the US worldview. So they
were out.
There are now five possible candidates from Asia Thai
Deputy-Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, South Korean Foreign
Minister Ban Ki-moon, Sri Lankan presidential adviser Jayantha
Dhanapala, Kemal Dervis, a Turk who is currently holding the
portfolio of UN Development Programme and Shashi Tharoor, an Indian
who is the UN deputy secretary-general overseeing media
affairs.
Two Europeans are also in the race Vaira Vike-Freiberga,
Latvia's president, and Alexander Kwasniewski, former Polish
president.
Behind the five Asian aspirants are Asia's huge population and
its massive economic clout.
Patient discussions and negotiations are required to eventually
choose the best candidate. At this very stage, it is too early to
predict who will be the next secretary-general.
The contest to succeed Annan greatly concerns developing nations
because the person at the UN helm is expected to play a vitally
important part in charting the future course of the United Nations.
The developing nations also hope that the new secretary-general
will help uphold the UN Charter's basic principles and that he or
she would fairly and properly handle a host of problems involving
racial conflicts, communal strife, religious disputes and
territorial clashes.
They also expect that the United Nations to take substantial and
effective measures to address the problem of the North-South
polarization and expect the reform of the United Nations to be
promoted in a steady and reasonable way. The new secretary-general
will play a major role in both tasks.
The United States has its own calculations. In general, it hopes
that the new secretary-general's political values, policy
orientations and way of working will be to Washington's taste. It
also hopes that the new secretary-general will back Washington's
foreign policy on important security issues and that the United
Nations, therefore, will roughly remain in the fold.
With regard to upholding the principles of the United Nations
Charter, the United States wants to replace the quintessence and
conventions of the UN Charter with "human rights coming before
sovereignty," "humanitarian interference" and "pre-emption." It
follows, therefore, that the desired new secretary-general will
assist Washington in this regard.
On the issue of development, the United States and others
provide developing countries with aid and reduce their debts
conditionally, using "human rights," "democracy" and "good
governance" as leverage. But they stay free from the commitments
required by the United Nations Millennium Summit's goals. The
desired new secretary-general should, therefore, not pressurize
Washington on these matters.
In terms of UN reform, the US administration is reluctant to see
these reforms started, including expanding the size of the Security
Council. So the best secretary-general should also be lukewarm
about the reforms.
Under such circumstances, it will be impossible to finally
decide on a new UN secretary-general, one that is to the liking of
all interested parties.
The situation, therefore, requires both sides to compromise to a
certain extent. It is quite possible that a new UN
secretary-general can be found who takes care of the interests of
the developing world as well as those of the big powers.
It is advisable that a leading diplomat from a small or
medium-sized country should be the next UN secretary-general, as
experience over the last six decades shows.
This is because, to begin with, the new secretary-general would
be universally representative, taking into consideration that the
vast majority of UN members are small- and medium-sized
countries.
Second, a secretary-general from a small- or medium-sized
country would help bring UN members closer together and, in turn,
promote UN unity. Third, a UN secretary-general from a small- or
medium-sized country would be more capable of facilitating
exchanges between these nations as well as winning backing from big
countries.
The author is a researcher with the China Institute of
International Studies.
(China Daily June 29, 2006)
