U.N. Places Its Bets on New Secretary-General

As the U.N. Security Council goes about selecting the next U.N. secretary-general, executives at Turtle Bay are placing their bets.

Last week, Secretary-General Annan appointed a South Korean woman, Kyung-wha Kang, as deputy high commissioner for human rights, a position carrying the rank of assistant secretary-general.

The appointment was announced three days after the latest test for the candidates to replace Mr. Annan, who will leave office in three months. In a blind straw poll, all but one of the Security Council's 15 members supported the candidacy of the foreign minister of South Korea, Ban Ki-moon.

Interested parties at Turtle Bay tried to find out whether one of the five permanent members of the council was the sole opposing vote. If so, that nay could turn into veto during the actual voting. Regardless, the assumption in the building, including on the executive 38th floor, was that Mr. Ban is now a formidable, if not invincible, candidate.

This makes Ms. Kang a good person to be friends with. In Mr. Ban's Foreign Ministry, she runs the international organization department, which deals with U.N. relations. She is one of the top officials in charge of Seoul's campaign to crown Mr. Ban secretary-general.

Was someone on the 38th floor eager to gain favors with the next administration by appointing Mr. Ban's aide to a lucrative job? According to a U.N. spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, Ms. Kang's appointment was done on merit. She was the most qualified among several candidates, and the interview process and confirmation took place before last week's straw poll, he told me.

It is entirely possible that no one was better for the job, but Ms. Kang's appointment, coming immediately after Mr. Ban's strong showing in the council's straw poll, smells like the current administration's attempt to ensure that the Turtle Bay tradition of back-scratching will continue.

During a sit-down with New York Sun editors in June, the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, ruffled some U.N. feathers by calling for the mass resignation of all its top managers, from the rank of ASG and above, at the end of Mr. Annan's term.

"With 12 weeks to go in Annan's tenure, it would be prudent to not do any more hiring so that the new secretary-general can build his or her team," an American official told me yesterday.

One question mark hovering over all of this is whether the assumptions on the 38th floor and throughout the Secretariat — that Mr. Ban's coronation is sewn up — are true. To be sure, the bland, inoffensive, and unexciting Mr. Ban is well ahead of all the other candidates. However, no one knows how the council members, especially China and America, are operating behind the scenes.

"China is very open and constructive," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told me last week."We have no difficulties electing any Asian candidate," he added, telling an Irish-American colleague that he would even have voted for him had he been from Asia.

Mr. Li said he would oppose any non-Asian, however, which would exclude President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, who entered the secretary-general race last week as an Eastern European protest candidate. The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, also voiced strong reservations about Mrs. Vike-Freiberga's candidacy, telling me that half of all Latvians were pro-Nazi during World War II.

Six Asian candidates have now declared themselves, including Prince Zeid of Jordan, who did not do well in the last poll. One or two additional candidates might enter prior to this week's third Security Council survey. And although Mr. Li told me that he would not oppose any Asian, including one from Jordan, it is hard to imagine that Beijing loves them all equally. Neither, presumably, does Washington.

Although Mr. Ban is the front-runner, one dark horse to watch is a former finance minister of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani. An ally of the Bush administration and of the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, as well as an adviser to the Chinese government while he served at the World Bank, Mr. Ghani is considered a straight arrow and a force to be reckoned with.

His management skills, which sparked an economic revival in post-Taliban Afghanistan, earned him Asia's vote as the best finance minister on the continent. Those qualities, needless to say, make him an ideal candidate to shake up Turtle Bay. Naturally, therefore, he is not a favorite of the current U.N. leadership.