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| The race to choose Annan's successor is hotting up | | |
Dmitry Kosyrev
Russia is not against any of the three front-runners from Asia. But are the Americans trying to fix the result?
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The leader of the pack is South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon
Kofi Annan's deputy, Shashi Tharoor, is at number two
In third place is Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai
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LATE LAST week, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council gathered for a closed-door ministerial meeting to discuss Kofi Annan's successor. Being part of the complicated electoral procedure, it did not produce any sensations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a participant at the meeting, said that the five Ministers exchanged opinions on the "current situation" and "compared their approaches." He confirmed that the Russian approach — to vote for a "candidate from Asia" — remains valid.
Mr. Annan's term expires on December 31. The place for his portrait among former secretaries-general on the wall of the corridor at the visitors' entrance to the U.N. is already marked with a not-very-neat piece of adhesive tape.
It became clear that there is a problem with the successor when the Baltic nations suggested Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga for the post, and a candidate from Afghanistan appeared later.
Those well versed in the mechanics of the U.N. procedures say the candidacy of the Latvian President is not serious, and not only because she is directly involved in the formation of what is essentially a racist state (a file on Latvia, where one-fifth of the population have no voting rights, is currently in the U.N. Human Rights Council).
The real favourites are already well known: these are the candidates who have the support of the General Assembly, that is, representatives of all 192 U.N. members. The new candidates, who are said to have been thrown in by the United States, simply do not stand a chance.
The procedure is that the Security Council recommends one candidate for consideration of the General Assembly, and it approves or discards it.
Complex procedure
What is happening within the Security Council is a much more complex procedure — a game with multicoloured cards. It will be particularly interesting on September 28, when its permanent members will have red cards or the right to veto decisions. None of the five countries should object to the candidate, but the Latvian President is guaranteed at least one veto — by Russia.
So far, the leader is South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon. After the last game he got only one incognito red card, whereas the others have three or even more. Mr. Annan's deputy, Shashi Tharoor, is at number two, and in third place is Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, whose candidature has since been clouded by the coup in his country. There are also candidates from Jordan and Sri Lanka, but they are far behind.
When Mr. Annan was re-elected for a second term five years ago, the Security Council and the U.N. in general agreed informally that his successor would be from Asia. The principle of rotation is logical — the U.N. should not be in the hands of Europeans or Africans alone. Finally, there is one more long-standing tradition — a Secretary-General should not represent any of the great powers, which already have enough advantages in the U.N. and the world as a whole.
Sources from the Russian Foreign Ministry report that Russian diplomacy agrees with the majority of the U.N. member-states on the Asian candidate. As for the majority, for Moscow the Indian candidate is as good as the Korean one; the Thai candidate is equally acceptable, as long as the rotation principle is adhered to.
But this is the principle to which the Latvian President objected openly in her recent speech in the U.N. In other words, she disagreed in advance with the majority of her "voters."
It is important to understand that if the Security Council names a candidate who suits its permanent and non-permanent members, but is not approved by the General Assembly, he will not be elected or will be elected with a minimal advantage, which is even worse, because in that case the U.N. will receive a Secretary-General of a lower legitimacy. This will be an obvious crisis.
Moscow wants to prevent another crisis in the U.N. in the belief that all other considerations are secondary. U.N. members are already criticising the procedure of electing the Secretary-General as undemocratic and as a sign of dominance in the U.N., and hence in the world, of the five members with the veto in the Security Council.
For this reason, India and Canada have submitted a proposal to establish a separate committee on elections, and deprive the Security Council of the right to play its coloured cards.
When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Security Council a body of threats and pressure in his U.N. speech several days ago, he knew who his audience was. Many of those countries, which were formerly regarded as the third world, have a growing influence on the world's economy and politics. All debates on U.N. reform show that the majority considers it logical to expand the Security Council and include the new leaders, as well as delegates from Africa and Latin America, and give them all the right of veto. Many would be even less pleased with the current Security Council if it fails to select the obvious successor — a candidate from Asia.
Many Russians view the appearance of the candidate from Latvia as an insult. But there is one more version — this may be a belated attempt to paralyse, if not destroy, the U.N. as a whole. There was a time when the U.S. thought that the U.N. was an obstacle to wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq.
Experts in U.N. internal diplomacy are confident of the third version — all three Asian candidates have got out of favour with the U.S., and it wants to create a crisis in order to throw in one more candidate, Chan Heng Chee, Singapore's Ambassador to the U.S., who is certainly from Asia, but has lived in America for about ten years.
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