U.S. Vetoes 2nd Term for Boutros-Ghali

The Clinton administration vetoed the reelection of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Tuesday, fulfilling a threat that has isolated the United States in the world body and alienated America from some of its closest allies here.

U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright cast the lone vote against Boutros-Ghali in a 20-minute closed meeting of the 15-member Security Council. As one of five permanent council members--with Britain, China, France and Russia--the United States can single-handedly kill any action by the council, which under the U.N. charter nominates the secretary-general for ratification by the 185-member General Assembly.

Albright said afterward that she acted on instructions from Secretary of State Warren Christopher and said the U.S. position now is “we want very much to get on with the process of selecting the new secretary-general.”

But a quick resolution may not occur. Boutros-Ghali, 74, declared the 14-1 vote an endorsement of his leadership and indicated that he will not withdraw from consideration, despite the U.S. veto.

“The secretary-general is grateful and very appreciative of the overwhelming support shown by the member states of the United Nations,” his spokeswoman, Sylvana Foa, said. She added that Boutros-Ghali still hopes to continue in office “doing wonderful things for the U.N.”

His refusal to withdraw raises the prospect of a protracted wrangle over succession, with his supporters repeatedly submitting his name and the U.S. exercising repeated vetoes. His term expires Dec. 31, and some U.N. delegates gloomily have predicted that the battle could continue to that day.

The U.S. is not openly backing a successor, largely because the U.S. delegation is so unpopular now at the U.N. that its support would doom any candidate to defeat by Boutros-Ghali’s many adherents.

But there seems to be wide agreement that preference should go to an African because Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian, was the first secretary-general from that continent and also would be the first denied a second five-year term. “We are waiting for the African countries to come forward with a list of viable candidates,” Albright said, noting: “We would like to have a secretary-general from Africa.”

The African nations, which often act in concert on such issues, now must decide whether to stay unified behind Boutros-Ghali or submit the names of other candidates. Meetings on that question began Tuesday at the New York office of the Organization of African Unity.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s vote, U.S. officials sought to portray their decision to deny Boutros-Ghali a second term as motivated by a desire to save the U.N. Until he is replaced, a U.S. official asserted to reporters this week, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress cannot be counted on to ease its hostility toward the U.N. and release back dues that the United States owes. According to the U.N., the United States is $1.45 billion in arrears.

The U.S. also has long been unhappy with Boutros-Ghali’s often distant, insular leadership style. It blames him--some say unfairly--for U.N. failures in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Somalia and has accused him of being reluctant to reform the organization’s huge bureaucracy.

But Boutros-Ghali and his supporters believe that he was sacrificed for political reasons. President Clinton, they reason, was able to prevent the GOP from using the U.N. as an election issue by throwing Boutros-Ghali overboard. Many of these theorists, including Boutros-Ghali himself, believed that Clinton would soften or reverse his decision after election day.

The administration also made enemies by acting against the secretary-general without approval of its allies and by leaking its decision to the press in June before informing other U.N. delegations. “They’re treating the Africans like children,” one African diplomat complained Tuesday.

Feelings have run so deep that the vote became more of a referendum on the U.S. position than an endorsement of Boutros-Ghali, many diplomats here say.

The former Egyptian deputy foreign minister, who played a crucial role in drafting the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel before joining the U.N., was the first post-Cold War secretary-general. Faced with a global explosion of ethnic conflicts and dissolving national boundaries, he sought to widen the U.N. role and played independent diplomat rather than exalted civil servant, unlike most of his predecessors.

He presided over a major expansion of U.N. peacekeeping and sought the creation of a standby U.N. force and a U.N. tax on international airline tickets.

Although he came late to the cause of reform, he put an American, Joseph Connor, in charge of streamlining the U.N. bureaucracy. Supporters boast Boutros-Ghali has cut 1,000 positions from the staff--which now totals 9,100--and brought in the first zero-growth budget in the U.N.’s 51-year history.

The possibility of a long stand-off between an immovable Boutros-Ghali and the veto-wielding Americans exasperates some U.N. members. British Ambassador John Weston, who voted in favor of Boutros-Ghali on Tuesday, has argued that the Security Council needs to move on and consider other candidates for secretary-general.

If the Africans stay behind Boutros-Ghali, it could leave an opening for a non-African. With Boutros-Ghali still seeking to keep his job, no other candidates have formally emerged, though speculation about potential African candidates has focused on: Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian U.N. undersecretary-general in charge of peacekeeping; Salim Ahmed Salim, the Tanzanian secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity; Hamid Algabid of Niger, head of the secretariat of the Organization of the Islamic Conference; and Graca Machel, former minister of education and culture in Mozambique and author of a recent U.N. report on the effect of war on children.

Non-Africans mentioned as possible candidates include three women: Sadako Ogata, U.N. high commissioner of refugees; former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland; and Irish President Mary Robinson.