THE UN Secretary General, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, will not withdraw his candidacy for a second term despite a US veto blocking his re-election, a UN spokeswoman said yesterday.
"He will not withdraw his candidacy until the [Security] Council has made a final decision on a secretary general," Ms Sylvana Foa said after the US ambassador to the UN, Ms Madeleine Albright, cast the US veto against Dr Boutros-Ghali.
The US was the only member of the 15 countries at the UN Security Council to vote against the Egyptian diplomat, who has steered the world body through the turbulence of the post-Cold War era.
While the US veto does not force Dr Boutros-Ghali (74) to withdraw his candidacy, it signals to other candidates in the wings to step forward. "Now it is the turn again of the African countries to come up with a candidate or candidates," said Indonesia's ambassador, Mr Nugroho Wisnumurti who holds the rotating chair of the UN Security Council.
Dr Boutros-Ghali, a francophone with a high profile in Egyptian diplomacy as minister of state for foreign affairs for 14 years until 1991, came from a legal and academic background.
He is from a wealthy family of Coptic Christians, but his belonging to that minority apparently prevented his appointment as foreign minister.
According to UN watchers, the "great powers" expect the secretary general to be the obedient servant of the Security Council, but Dr Boutros-Ghali was often in conflict with the council on international security issues.
Critics also say he failed to bring a moral dimension to his post at a time when the world was grappling with new ethnic conflicts breaking out following the collapse of the communist bloc and the end of US-Soviet rivalry in far-flung regions.
He once called the war in former Yugoslavia "a rich man's war when he thought the Security Council should be concentrating on Somalia.
With the UN being blamed for the international community's failure to impose peace in Somalia in 1993, and prevent the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Dr Boutros-Ghali was a convenient scapegoat.
A foreign affairs specialist, Mr Mort Halperin, says the problem was largely the failure of the major powers to know what they wanted to do."