Posted on 07/24/2006 9:48:46 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
THE United Nations Security Council has held its first secret straw poll on four Asian candidates vying to succeed Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, as UN secretary general.
All four candidates to succeed Mr Annan, whose second five-year term expires at the end of the year, are Asian as the consensus at the UN is that it is now Asia's turn to assume the world body's top job in line with an unwritten rule of regional rotation.
The candidates are South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon, Sri Lankan diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, and India's Shashi Tharoor, a UN undersecretary in charge of communications.
The council's 15 members were presented with three choices in the secret ballot: encourage, discourage, and no opinion.
Ambassadors of the four countries which fielded candidates were informed of the outcome but there was no official announcement on the results.
"The reason we decided not to make the results public was so that the individual candidates could draw their own conclusions," US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said.
"We will see if they draw any conclusion one way or the other once they've had a chance to consider these results."
Mr Bolton said the ballot was significant in two key respects:
One was the fact that it was held so early in the year, with the goal of making a final decision at the end of September or early October.
The second was precisely that it might now lead to a decision "either for additional candidates to enter the race or for one or more candidates in the race to drop out based on their own assessment of how the vote went".
Under UN Charter rules, the secretary general is elected by the 192-member General Assembly under recommendation from the Security Council, whose five permanent members the US, China, France, Britain and Russia have veto power.
In practice, the five permanent members have dominated the secretary general succession process.
Mr Bolton meanwhile noted that with all the talk of regional rotation, it was "striking there's so little talk of gender rotation".
"We've had one gender (in charge of the UN for 60 years). Maybe people ought to consider that as well," he said.
He couldn't be any worse than Krooked Kofi!!!
I nominate the next UN Secretary General to be from Taiwan!
The smart money's on Shashi Tharoor. His friends just call him THEBIGDOG. Man, can he dance. He can bust a rhyme too. Old school, that guy. Sort of like a Bollywood meets The Notorious B.I.G.
I didn't know Kim Jong-il is looking for a job...
After being hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar for three days, the winner...is..........Osama Bin Laden!!!!
When is US's turn to quit the UN?
"invite Aung San Suu Kyi to leave Burma and become the
SecGen....if it 'has' to be an Asian..."
She is not free to leave Burma; she's been under house arrest by the military generals since her election as leader of the country ten or so years ago. She would be a great leader of the UN if available. However, the UN would never elect her; she wouldn't give a free pass to all the scumbags that hold UN seats.
Since it's Asia's "turn" for the Sec-General, the only POSSIBLE choice is...
Heh heh heh.
Cheers!
""invite Aung San Suu Kyi to leave Burma and become the SecGen....if it 'has' to be an Asian..."They wouldn't even let her seeing her dying husband... No way they would let her out to become SecGen.
actually she was completely 'encouraged' to go see her dying husband , in England ...They refused to let him go to see her.
She knew she would never be allowed to return if once she left. So she stayed and he died . The SPDC thugs would love to get rid of her . They don't believe the world exists outside their own borders anyway.
Where is BUBBA
See #16.
EXCELLENT!
Guess who is sorry that he decided to be America's first Black President instead of being America's first Asian President?
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