'I have so much personal stake in the success of the UN'
The Government of India has officially nominated you as its candidate for the post of secretary general -- but that is just the first step, right? What next -- do you have to campaign for election, in some fashion?
It does become a bit complicated, in the sense that it is the kind of post for which traditionally people have not campaigned very much. There hasn't been much campaigning for this post in the past. And I have a job to do here already.
But the truth is that the current candidates who are already in the race have been campaigning quite a lot already, so there is no doubt that one would have to do at least a little bit to make the case for oneself with member States.
What form will this campaigning take for you personally? Is it passive in the sense of merely making yourself available to interested parties so they can quiz you on your thoughts and your agenda, or is there an active component to it?
As far as possible I aim to do my normal work at the UN, while giving interviews and meeting government officials as appropriate. But if I need to visit a capital, I would of course take leave from my job for the time needed.
There is reportedly an unwritten coda that the post goes by rotation and that it is now the turn of Asia to hold it. Does that hold good?
It is an unofficial rotation, in the sense that the Security Council has a free hand to pick whoever they want to pick, from any of the member nations, and recommend that name to the Assembly. But in the last three or four elections, a pattern has developed that the post rotates.
Of the first four secretaries, three were European (the other being an Asian, Burma's U Thant, 1961-1971) -- but after the last one of those, Mr (Kurt) Waldheim (1972-1981), there has been Latin American (Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru, who held office between 1982-1991) and two Africans (Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, 1992-1996 and the incumbent, Kofi Annan, 1997-2006), and so now it is time for an Asian again.
It is admittedly an unwritten convention, but the Asian groups and the African groups have both announced that they feel very strongly that it should be Asia's turn this year, and so while there is no question in anybody's mind that the UNSC is free to pick any candidate, it is widely believed that it would be Asia that would produce the winning horse.
Photograph: Jay Mandal
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