THE nomination of Mr Koffi Annan of Ghana to be the next UN secretary general is a triumph for US diplomacy, which has ousted Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali and secured the post for its favoured African candidate.
Mr Annan is at present UN Under Secretary General in charge of peacekeeping, a post where he has won praise for his actions in Bosnia.
The six months of intense diplomatic manoeuvring over an acceptable candidate began last June when the US announced it would veto the former Egyptian diplomat if he ran. The US said that he had failed to reform the UN bureaucracy and this made it more difficult to persuade Congress to pay the $1.5 billion membership dues owed by the US.
After four days of informal voting this week, the 15 member Security Council yesterday agreed on Mr Annan's nomination. But first France bad to lift its veto on Mr Annan, who at the start of the voting had the support of the other 14 members. His name will now go to the 185 member UN General Assembly for formal approval before it breaks up next Tuesday.
The candidate favoured by France was the French speaking Foreign Minister of the Ivory Coast, Mr Amara Essy, but he was unable to muster the minimum nine votes required and had also been vetoed in the informal polls by the US and Britain.
While France had earlier indicated that Mr Annan was not sufficiently fluent in French, Paris clearly decided that it was not worth antagonising other African countries by maintaining its veto. If Mr Annan had not been selected, there was a likelihood that the race would have been thrown open to a non African.
Mr Annan (58) began his career as a UN official in 1962 when he took a post in the World Health Organisation. He took a break in 1974-76 to return to Ghana to direct its tourism development.
Mr Annan's long absence from Africa and his higher education in US and Swiss colleges has given rise to a perception that he is also an American or western candidate. He has a bachelor's degree from Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota and a master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.