UNITED NATIONS: Four Contenders Hit Snags in Race for U.N. Chief

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 1996 (IPS) - Four African diplomats vying to replace U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali are all facing increasingly shaky prospects as the U.N. Security Council failed to rally behind any one of them.

The 15-member Security Council will still consider the four candidates — Kofi Annan of Ghana, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah of Mauritania, Amara Essy of Cote d’Ivoire and Hamid Algabid of Niger — this week, Council President Francesco Paolo Fulci of Italy said.

But Council sources told IPS that each of the four has had at least one of the veto-wielding permanent Council members cast a negative vote against him.

In two rounds of “straw polls” held Tuesday, Annan, the U.N. under-secretary-general for peacekeeping, led the others, but faces the likelihood of being vetoed by one permanent member.

In the first round of secret balloting, Annan won 12 votes, with two against and one abstention. By contrast, Essy, Cote d’Ivoire’s foreign minister, won 11 votes with four against; Algabid, secretary-general of the Islamic Conference, won seven votes with five against; and Ould Abdallah, who heads the Washington-based World Coalition for Africa, also won seven with five against.

But in the second round, where the five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — voted separately with red ballots to indicate possible vetoes, each candidate earned at least one red ballot against him.

Annan still led, with 10 votes for and four against, but one of the so-called “discouraged” votes came from a permanent member. Essy won seven votes in favour, but had two non-permanent and two permanent members against him.

Algabid fared worse, with only five in favour, and five non- permanent and two permanent votes against him and Ould Abdallah trailing with three in favour, and five non-permanent and two permanent votes against him.

“If a new Pope has not been elected, black smoke comes out of the chimney,” Fulci noted Tuesday night. “The smoke coming out of the room tonight is black.”

For many diplomats, speaking in private on the confidential process, the straw poll results show an increasingly tough stand- off between the United States, which led the move to unseat incumbent Egyptian diplomat Boutros-Ghali, and France, which still supports him.

Those sources claim that France vetoed Annan, who has been perceived as the U.S. favourite, while the United States and its ally, Britain, vetoed the other four contenders.

“Britain and the United States will press for Annan, but if they can’t get him, they will open up the race,” one Council diplomat said. But others say that France is still seeking to block challengers to Boutros-Ghali, a friend of the late French President Francois Mitterrand, and is encouraging Essy’s candidacy if the incumbent fails.

Boutros-Ghali, who has temporarily suspended his own candidacy to allow others to run, was approved by 14 of the 15 members on Nov 19, but the United States vetoed him. He has refused to withdraw, and may regard Tuesday’s results as a sign he is still the strongest candidate.

“Ghali is the front-runner, and anyone who doesn’t say that about these results is lying,” another Council diplomat said. “He has won again. Nobody else has the support of the permanent five members or of the overwhelming majority.”

But U.S. diplomats did not feel discouraged that no clear alternative to Boutros-Ghali has emerged, nearly a month after the Egyptian was vetoed. “We are encouraged that the process is working,” a senior U.S. official told IPS.

If the race for a new five-year term to head the United Nations drags on, other candidates currently on the sidelines are expected to emerge. Among them are Salim Ahmed Salim, a Tanzanian diplomat who was repeatedly vetoed by the United States when he vied for the U.N. top spot in 1981, and several non-African diplomats.

For now, however, all Council members appear committed that an African should replace Boutros-Ghali, to appease African concerns that the Egyptian could become the first secretary-general not to be granted two full terms.