Foreign diplomats and most U.N. officials are rooting for Senator Obama to win the White House in November, though they have wisely avoided thinly disguised interference in the American presidential election.

At the height of the last presidential campaign, Secretary-General Annan called the Iraq war “illegal” and, in a memo leaked to the press days before the election, his top aides warned against attacking Fallujah. While Secretary-General Ban’s top officials have refrained thus far from such public meddling, U.N. officials at the highest level acknowledge privately that Mr. Obama “would be much better for us” than his Republican rival, Senator McCain.

Mr. Obama should pray that they keep such sentiments to themselves. Few American candidates for high office have won votes outside Manhattan’s East Side by boasting of support from Turtle Bay. When Republicans are in power in Washington, much less praise and funding are directed First Avenue’s way than under the Democrats.

Nevertheless, internationalists should listen carefully to Mr. McCain’s idea of creating a competitor to the United Nations. Competitive juices can serve to kill or to help revive even the most sclerotic of institutions — and no institution is more stuck in its ways than Turtle Bay. For proof, let’s listen to those in the know.

When he arrived at the United Nations from the South Korean Foreign Ministry 20 months ago, Mr. Ban thought he knew a thing or two about bureaucracies. “Then I arrived in New York,” he said last week in a private address — quickly leaked — to top aides in Turin, Italy. “There is bureaucracy, I discovered, and then there is the U.N.,” he said.

In a line that could have been stolen from the two American political parties’ conventions, he added, “Our job is to change the U.N., and, through it, the world.” But in attempting change, he acknowledged, “I tried to lead by example. Nobody followed.”

What’s the solution? After highlighting a few of the United Nations’ most glaring shortcomings, Mr. Obama wrote in the August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs that “none of these problems will be solved unless America rededicates itself to the organization and its mission.”

That kind of commitment is music to Turtle Bay’s ears, especially compared to Mr. McCain’s proposal to create a “League of Democracies.” U.N. denizens see the plan as a direct threat to the authority of their organization; few have read, or cared to believe, the Arizona senator’s explanation: His proposed league is intended to “complement” their all-encompassing institution, rather than bury it.

The league “would not supplant the United Nations or other international organizations,” Mr. McCain told the Hoover Institution in March. “It could act where the U.N. fails to act,” as in Darfur, he said, and “bring concerted pressure to bear on tyrants in Burma or Zimbabwe, with or without Moscow’s and Beijing’s approval.” As such, it also could “unite to impose sanctions on Iran and thwart its nuclear ambitions,” he added.

Or it might not. South Africa, a full-fledged democracy, is currently one of America’s biggest nemeses on the U.N. Security Council regarding the above issues, but in the proposed league it presumably would have no backing from Russia and China, both of which have veto power at the council.

For now, the Bush administration has dealt with Iran as many Democrats have advocated it should have done in Iraq’s case: It has swept the problem under the rug by going to the do-nothing Security Council. There is a “myth,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Florida, told the Institute for Contemporary Affairs in Jerusalem in June, that “even though the United Nations has been proven time and time again to be a failure at its mission, we should still unquestioningly rely on the U.N. to solve growing threats to our security, including the Iranian nuclear crisis.”

For Turtle Bay, which relies on Washington for nearly a quarter of its budget, such slights from the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs sound threatening. But Security Council resolutions will have no influence on the mullahs’ behavior, just as Mr. Ban’s personal example is unlikely to change U.N. habits. If a competing body of like-minded countries imposed regime-threatening sanctions on Tehran, the Security Council might have followed suit. Or not, in which case it would become even more irrelevant than it currently is.

Similarly, as Mr. Ban’s address indicated, old habits make the task of streamlining the United Nations’ bureaucracy nearly impossible. An upstart organization could lead by example, forcing Turtle Bay to change its ways, as well — or disappear into the sunset.

bavni@nysun.com