Could New UN Sec. General Be A Good Pick?
I don’t know much about him, but this sounds promising:
Senior officials at the United Nations expressed despair today at the prospect of Kofi Annan being succeeded as secretary general by Ban Ki-Moon, the South Korean foreign minister.
“The mood among staff is glum,” one of the officials said. “We are not very excited about the outcome.” With morale low at the UN after five years dominated by divisions, deadlock and corruption, they are sceptical about Mr Ban’s ability to turn the organisation round or provide the strong, inspirational leadership they had been hoping for.
Another official, who has met Mr Ban several times, said: “He is pretty faceless and does not have much charisma. Kofi, for all his problems, is a man of considerable dignity, political insight and wide international experience.”
Officials, who requested anonymity on the grounds that they would be working for Mr Ban, portray him as more secretary than general, happier with the minutiae of administrative detail than broad international strategy, and a man given to platitudes.
If the current crop of corrupt and ineffective bureaucrats at the UN don’t like this guy then it stands to reason that I might, and that his pick might be a vast improvement over Annan for American and the world.
Plus the French don’t like him either, which is just gravy on top of the UN rank-and-file “despair.”












