NEW
YORK - When India ran against Japan for a
non-permanent seat on the 15-member United Nations
Security Council back in October 1996, it suffered
a humiliating defeat. The vote was a whopping 142
for Japan and a measly 40 for India in a General
Assembly of 191 member states. By UN standards, it
was a monumental political disaster.
India
partially redeemed itself when it was recently
elected to the new Human Rights Council with the
highest number of votes for the Asian slate of
candidates: 173, compared with Bangladesh's 160,
Pakistan's 149 and Sri Lanka's 123. Now it is
looking to make an even greater comeback, the
election of an Indian to succeed Kofi Annan as
secretary general.
It is widely expected
that the job will go to an Asian this term. So
far,
the three declared Asian candidates are Ambassador
Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka, Thailand's Deputy
Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, and South
Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.
Japan
remains tight-lipped. But not surprisingly, the
Indian government wass expected to announce in New
Delhi on Thursday that it will support Shashi
Tharoor, UN under secretary general for
communications and public information, as its
candidate. The job falls vacant on December 31
when incumbent Kofi Annan leaves after his
two-term, 10-year tenure in office.
India's interest could trigger a riposte
from its long-standing political rival and
neighbor: Pakistan. According to one political
source, the Pakistani government may well nominate
its own candidate merely to irritate the Indians.
Tharoor, the highest-ranking Indian in the
world body, has worked in the UN bureaucracy since
1978, has a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the United
States, and is author of several novels, including
a political satire titled The Great Indian
Novel.
According to a time-honored
tradition but not specified in the UN Charter, the
job of secretary general should not be held by any
country with a permanent seat on the Security
Council or from the world's other major political
or economic powers, thereby ruling out countries
such as the United States, Japan, India, China,
Germany, France, Russia and the United Kingdom.
Both India and Japan desire to achieve
permanent status on the Security Council, and
India's recent elevation to the Human Rights
Council was seen as a step in that direction. But
expansion of the council to include more permanent
members is moribund, so there is little reason to
hold back on the top job.
As a consequence
of this unwritten rule, former incumbents have
come from smaller states: Norway (Trygve Lie),
Sweden (Dag Hammarskjold), Burma (U Thant),
Austria (Kurt Waldheim), Peru (Javier Perez de
Cuellar), Egypt (Boutros Boutros-Ghali) and Ghana
(Annan). But that tradition can be broken because
it is not cast in stone.
The 15-member
Security Council traditionally recommends one name
that is usually approved by the 191-member General
Assembly.
Last month, former ambassador T
P Sreenivasan, who has served both in New York and
Washington, laid out a possible scenario, perhaps
reflecting the then-unannounced views of the upper
echelons of the Indian Foreign Service. He singled
out Tharoor as a possible candidate.
"The
dilemma for India is not about finding a suitable
candidate to put forward," wrote Sreenivasan. "It
is about the incompatibility between seeking a
candidature and aspiring to become a permanent
member [of the Security Council]. But since that
does not seem to be in the realm of possibility,"
argued Sreenivasan, "we should not give up the
option of putting up a candidate for the post of
secretary general."
Since India has been
cozying up to Washington with its nuclear deal -
and, more important, with its open criticism of
Iran's nuclear ambitions - "the US is not likely
to veto an Indian", Sreenivasan predicted.
But the unknown factor is the Chinese
veto. Although China has continuously reaffirmed
its support for an Asian as the next UN chief, it
may have second thoughts about an Indian secretary
general, particularly when Washington is
strengthening its relationship with India as a
political and military counterweight to Beijing.
There is no love lost between India and China.
A single veto can doom any candidacy. When
Boutros-Ghali ran for a second term in late 1996,
he lost the election despite the fact that he got
14 out of 15 votes in the Security Council. The
single veto by the United States killed his
chances of continuing as secretary general.
