US:Washington's warm reception for the UN secretary general signals an end to quarrels over the Iraq war - but at a price, writes Colum Lynch
When UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon paid his first official visit to Washington last month, he received the White House version of a seal of approval: a presidential pat on the back and an invitation to phone President Bush whenever he needs help in responding to an international crisis.
Ban's warm reception appeared to signal an end to an era of US confrontation with the UN that was marred by quarrels over the Iraq war, Republican- led corruption hearings on Capitol Hill and relentless threats of funding cuts.
Such a turn of fortune in Washington comes at a price though: Ban is facing a diplomatic backlash from developing nations that suspect the former South Korean foreign minister of seeking to reshape the UN to accommodate US interests and the desires of other wealthy member nations.
They have stonewalled his early attempt to reorganise the UN bureaucracy.
The stand-off has weakened Ban barely a month into the job, as he faces one of the top challenges confronting every UN leader: how to strike a balance between the organisation's most powerful member and an influential bloc of developing countries that resist policies that appear to track with US interests.
"There is always suspicion no matter what the US does because it is such an overwhelmingly powerful player," said Munir Akram, Pakistan's UN ambassador and chairman of the influential Group of 77, a Third World bloc. "I think that's a natural function of being a big power, of being the biggest power."
Developing nations have already quashed a proposal to broaden the powers of the UN's chief diplomatic arm, the Department of Political Affairs.
The proposal generated fierce opposition after it was reported that the department might be headed by an American, former ambassador to Indonesia B Lynn Pascoe, for the first time in a generation. The United Nations on Friday announced Pascoe's appointment, along with those of other senior officials from China, Egypt and Japan.
Another powerful Third World bloc - the Non-Aligned Movement, currently chaired by Cuba - is taking aim at Ban's plans for disarmament and peacekeeping. The secretary general proposed reorganising the expanding UN peacekeeping department to better handle the largest increase in peacekeeping missions in the organisation's history, while downgrading the disarmament department.
The latter office is particularly popular among poor countries concerned with the nuclear arsenals of powerful nations.
"There is a lack of clarity," Akram said of Ban's initiatives. He said it is unlikely that the General Assembly, in which every member nation has a vote, would move quickly to take action on Ban's initiatives.
"It's quite natural the secretary general wants to get his reform or restructuring proposals done as soon as he can," Akram said, "but I think the processes in the General Assembly are such that do not lend themselves to fast-track decisions."
Alejandro D Wolff, acting US ambassador to the United Nations, said international fears that Ban was doing Washington's bidding were baseless and were hampering sincere efforts to carry out "concrete and practical and apolitical" reforms, but it had been difficult to counter the perception.
"The conspiracy theorists out there are convinced this is an American agenda and that this is a secretary general who is essentially responding to American demands," Wolff said.
To assuage such concerns, Ban moved early to assign key administrative posts to officials from the developing world, including a Tanzanian deputy secretary general, an Indian chief of staff and a Mexican management chief.
He also backtracked from a pledge to carry out a broad inquiry into the financial practices of most of the UN development and relief agencies, a move that was popular in Washington but unpopular within the Group of 77.
Those gestures have done little to counter the perception that Ban's most important policymakers are recruited from the United States and Europe or that he is undercutting the influence of the United Nations' Third World blocs.
"He is, either accidentally or by design, taking on a lot of reform issues that pinch the Non-Aligned Movement rather than ones that pinch the United States," said Michael Doyle, a visiting professor at Yale University who served as an adviser to Kofi Annan, Ban's predecessor. "We don't know yet whether he's going to turn around and pursue with equal vigour the kinds of reforms that are not that popular in Washington."