‘Con artist’ Shashi Tharoor’s candidacy for UN secretary General post vetoed by China or was it the U.S.?
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, October 04, 2006 - ‘Con artist’ Shashi Tharoor, India's ‘light weight’ candidate for the post of the UN Secretary General, had to drop out from the race, on Monday October 2, 2006, after being vetoed by one of the five permanent UN members in the fourth and final straw poll (held since July) in voting in the 15-member UN Security Council in New York.Last Monday’s (October 2) UN Security Council straw poll showed that none of the council's five permanent members (China, France, Russia, U.K., and the United States) vetoed South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon’s nomination, and that the post of UN Secretary General is therefore his. Ban Ki-Moon, got 14 ‘encouraging’- yes - votes. He did not get any 'discouraging’ - No - vote, but one country did not express any opinion about him. His opponent India’s Shashi Tharoor got 10 'encouraging' votes and 3 'discouraging' votes, including that of a permanent member. Two countries did not express any opinion about Tharoor. Ban Ki-Moon defeated five other candidates in the four straw polls, including UN Undersecretary-General Shashi Tharoor, 50, of India. The other four defeated candidates in the fray got five or less votes. Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, 69, got five votes, making her in third place. Earlier, Jayanta Dhanapala of Sri Lanka had withdrawn from the race. Sri Lanka had then decided to back Ban's candidature for the post. The other defeated candidates were Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, 47, who got four “encourage”, seven “discourage”, including two from permanent members and four “no opinion” votes; Prince Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, Jordan's 42-year-old ambassador to the UN, got two “encourage”, eight “discourage”, including one from a permanent member and five “no opinion” votes.; and, former Afghan finance minister and Chancellor of Kabul University Ashraf Ghani, 57, got four “encourage” and 11 “discourage”, including three from permanent members.
Ambassador Kenzo Oshima of Japan, who holds the Security Council presidency for the month of October, said the Security Council is likely to hold a formal vote early next week. He said he was not authorized to disclose the result of Monday’s straw poll because of 'a gentlemen's agreement' with the Council. "I think the sense of the Council is that on the basis of Monday's ballot, the Council is now ready for a formal ballot," he told reporters after the meeting. "We will discuss this matter in Tuesday morning's informal consultations and take a decision on it. The likelihood is that we will be having this formal vote early next week."
The scuttlebutt circulating, in the corridors of the UN, suggests that it was the U.S., seeking major reforms in the United Nations, which vetoed wheeler-dealer Shashi Tharoor’s candidacy as the ‘greedy corrupt Indian’ continued heading the U.N. Department of Public Information, and getting paid, after being officially nominated by the government of India to contest for the post of U.N. Secretary General. This is something forbidden under the UN rules, something a future UN Secretary General, who will preside over UN reforms, ought not to be doing. A respected, and widely read, open forum on UN news and issues, UNFORUM, in a report on its website, on July 15, 2006, headlined, “IT IS AGAINST THE RULES. DOES ANNAN HAVE "A DOG IN THAT FIGHT?" (www.unforum.com/UNheadlines332.htm) accused Shashi Tharoor of ignoring his U.N. oath by dishonestly, “bending the rules, exploring what he could get away with under the supportive -- often amused -- gaze of his mentor, Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had promoted him exceptionally from a D-1 to Under-Secretary General within three years. But when an official candidature is announced, the rules are clear.”
However, media reports are not clear about which permanent member actually voted against Shashi Tharoor. One can only make a logical guess. The big five -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- used blue ballots while the other 10 rotating members used white ballots. The straw poll was the fourth since July of this year. The following fifteen countries (* astrick means permanent veto-wielding UN Security Council member) make up the current UN Security Council:- Argentina, China*, Congo Republic, Denmark, France*, Ghana, Greece, Japan, Peru, Qatar, Russia*, Slovakia, Tanzania, UK*, and USA*. Four permanent UN Security Council members – U.S., Russia, France, and the U.K. – are also major arms exporters who are actively bidding (and lobbying) to sell warplanes, warships, tanks and guns as they all seem to believe the Indian propaganda that Delhi was in the market place with a huge shopping list for guns, war planes and warships etc., worth tens of billions of dollars. These four are therefore not likely to vote against an Indian candidate. Our sources believe that it was China’s No vote on Monday, (which does not export armaments to India and imports mainly raw materials, like Iron ore etc., from India) which stamped ‘PAID’ on Shashi Tharoor’s UN ambitions. After the straw poll, China's Permanent Representative to the UN, Wang Guangya, said, 'It is quite clear from Monday's straw poll that Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon is the candidate the Security Council will recommend to the UN General Assembly.” The US Ambassador John Bolton also endorsed the South Korean foreign minister and said that, “To the U.S. government he (Ban Ki-Moon) is well-known and highly respected. He has had extensive experience in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy and as foreign minister and an ally of the U.S.” Mr. Shashi Tharoor is quoted by the BBC as having said that it was not yet clear which permanent member used the negative vote against him. Maybe that country wants Mr Ban to win and must have voted against all the other candidates too. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/5402010.stm)
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon, 62, a soft-spoken career diplomat, who won last Monday’s fourth informal straw poll, is now on the verge of being elected the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations when a formal vote is held, in the 15-member UN Security Council, on Monday October 9, 2006. The winner's name will then be sent to the UN General Assembly for ratification after the October 9 formal vote. That body, consisting of all 192 UN members, is scheduled to make Ban Ki-Moon's election official within a month. He would take office as UN secretary General, on January 1, 2007, for the first five year term. As Kofi Annan's successor, Ban Ki-Moon would inherit an institution with 9,000 workers, $5 billion in annual spending, 16 peacekeeping missions and a public image dented by a series of corruption scandals. He faces a tremendous task of tackling reforms at the UN, which is a huge and sometime inflexible organization.
Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-Moon, born June 13, 1944, attended the country's most prestigious institute of higher learning, Seoul National University, where he received a degree in international relations in 1970. He also earned a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University in 1985. Ban's first overseas posting was in India, and he also served in Austria, the United Nations and the US along with other positions in Seoul before becoming foreign minister in January 2004. He previously served as Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's foreign policy adviser and before that as South Korea's ambassador to the UN in 2001 and to Austria in 1998. His campaign for the UN position has been low-key, with Ban mostly spurning media publicity. U.N. officials and other diplomats say that while Ban lacks charisma, he is an experienced and skillful diplomat who knows the United Nations from a stint as Korea’s ambassador there. He also speaks English and French, a prerequisite for the job in addition to Korean, and has one son and two daughters.
Ban Ki-Moon has cultivated good relations with China, Russia and the United States as South Korea’s chief negotiator in talks over the fate of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. “We’ve always had the highest professional regard for him,” said John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the world body. As Ban's appointment became certain, speculation was ripe for other major positions in the organization as customarily, top officials in the rank of Assistant Secretary General and above resign to enable the new incumbent make his own appointments which gives him flexibility in shuffling them around. During the informal poll process, there have been reports in the British media that South Korea had given inducements in the form of cash and gifts to countries for getting their vote for Ban. Meanwhile, diplomats expressed confidence that election by the 192-member UN General Assembly would be just a formality. If elected, Ban will be the second Asian to hold the post, the first being U Thant of Burma who held the office from 1961 to 1971. Current Secretary-general Kofi Anann, a Ghanaian, was elected to give Africa a second term - generally each incumbent gets two terms - for Africa after the United States vetoed the second term for Boutros Butros Ghali. Originally, Anann had said he would serve only one term but went to serve two five year terms which end on Dec 31, 2006.
The election of Korean Foreign minister Ban Ki-Moon as UN Secretary General, after the ‘blackball’ defeat of Shashi Tharoor marks the third – possibly the fourth – major failure of Indian foreign policy this year under the leadership of a nominated – not elected – Prime minister of the world’s largest demoNcracy. – India. Last month Pakistan was elected Chairman of the G-77 (Group of 77) for the year 2007 when it could have easily been India. Although the membership of the G-77, established by 77 countries in Geneva in 1964, now stands at 131 countries – members of the UN – the original name was retained because of historical significance. As the largest third world coalition in the United Nations the G-77 provides the means for the developing world to articulate and promote its collective economic interest and enhance its joint negotiating capacity on all major economic and other issues in the United Nations system. G-77 will play a major role in 2007 about deciding about permanent membership of the UN Security Council for aspirants like India.
Also last month after the 14th summit of the 118-member Non-aligned Movement (term coined by Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru during a speech in 1954 in Colombo) held in Havana Cuba (which meeting was considered important enough that it was attended by Prime minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf) it was assumed that it was India’s turn to host the 15th NAM summit meeting in New Delhi in 2009. For some reason India did not make the offer to host the meeting, and the organization had to choose Cairo, Egypt, instead. Maybe the rulers in Delhi, obsessed with the nuclear deal with the U.S., did not want to offend the anti-Castro lobby in the United States!
It seems from the above that India has also given up its quest for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Why would it ignore the above two major organizations, with their hundred plus votes in the UN General assembly, which would have been of great help in pushing for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council for India, a country with a billion plus population? Probably the Indian rulers are afraid to offend, a la their fear of the anti-Castro lobby mentioned above, the weak pro-Pakistan lobby in the United States!
As if the above foreign policy setbacks for India are not enough the much trumpeted Indo-US Nuclear deal has been pigeonholed for now, on the Hill in Washington DC, to be looked at by the UN Senate sometime at the end of the current year, after the elections, by the lame duck U.S. Congress. The chances of passage of the bill at that time don’t seem to be very bright.It will be interesting to see the spin Indian officials will give to these foreign policy setbacks. These incidents (and the spin) ought to remind diplomatic observers of the 1984 fairytale, circulated by the evil Brahmin/Bania ruling combine, that it was not Indira Gandhi who ordered the attack on the Darbar Sahib Amritsar in June 1984 but ISI (Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency) agents who had infiltrated her office. Perhaps the Indian Prime minister office in New Delhi will soon seek an alibi by claiming that it has again been infiltrated by ISI agents who have arranged these foreign policy setbacks and disasters. Maybe the former foreign minister, Natwar Singh, was right when he said earlier this year, that Prime minister Manmohan Singh, an economist and a Sikh (who was appointed Prime minister by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian widow of mass murderer Rajiv Gandhi who ordered the killing of thousands of innocent Sikh men, women and children in November 1984) who currently holds charge of the Foreign ministry portfolio as well, knows nothing about foreign policy. One can safely add that he also does not know anything about the misery of the debt-ridden suicidal Punjab farmers – mostly Sikhs - he has ignored, while providing federal Rs.17, 000 crore relief for the farmers of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala states who are relatively less burdened by debt to the usurious Bania than the Punjabi farmer. Prime minister Manmohan Singh some Sikh! Manmohan Singh some Prime minister! India some country!