Diplomat From Ghana Is Picked to Head the U.N.

Searching for clarification of its role in the post-Cold War world and mired in financial woe, the United Nations turned for leadership Friday to one of its veteran officials, Kofi Annan of Ghana, with the Security Council designating him the seventh secretary-general.

Annan, 58, has held U.N. posts around the world for 30 years, most recently the sensitive job of undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations.

He is well liked within the U.N. and is known for his quiet-spoken but effective consensus-building, a skill he suggested he will use in seeking to reconcile the oft-conflicting visions that members have for the future of the world body.

He won the unanimous backing of the 15-member Security Council after the other three candidates, all also from Africa, withdrew Friday. French Ambassador Alain Dejammet, the lone holdout against Annan as of Thursday, then endorsed him.

Annan’s nomination will go to the General Assembly--made up of 185 member countries--early next week for final ratification.

He is to begin his five-year term Jan. 1.

In an interview in his 37th-floor office after the Security Council vote, Annan indicated that his first priorities will be to “reorient the focus” of the U.N. and improve its financial condition.

“There is one debate we haven’t had yet,” he said. “After 50 years of existence, and as we move into the 21st century, the member states will have to answer the questions: ‘What should the U.N. be doing? What is our business? What sort of U.N. do we want for the 21st century? What should our priorities and our objectives be?’ And this debate, this discussion, becomes even more urgent when you consider the financial climate in which we operate.”

But Annan described the role of secretary-general as a “facilitator” of decisions made by members.

This suggests a more conciliatory approach than that of the current secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian who sometimes operated as an independent international diplomat, angering the United States and other world powers.

Annan added that he will pursue financial reform of the U.N., a top priority of the United States that usually is interpreted to mean a reduction in the organization’s staff and budget.

The U.S. and other reform-minded members have proposed creating a position of deputy undersecretary-general for administration, a move that Annan said would be worth discussing.

But he also tied reform to the need for members to pay their bills, saying, “You cannot be efficient when you are living on shoestrings, managing on shoestrings.”

The United States is the U.N.’s biggest debtor, owing $1.3 billion.

The Clinton administration cited the need for a reform-oriented secretary-general in its decision to use a rare Security Council veto to block a second term for Boutros-Ghali, 74, who was said to be reluctant to embrace cuts.

Only by replacing him, U.S. officials said, could the administration persuade a reluctant Republican Congress to vote the money owed the U.N.

Annan is more at ease with the media than Boutros-Ghali and sees a need to sell the U.N. to the public, particularly in the United States.

“If we make this organization truly the organization of ‘We the peoples of the world’ . . . open up . . . let people know what we do, what we can’t do . . . I have no doubt that the politicians will find the will to be behind us,” he said Friday.

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The U.S. veto of Boutros-Ghali--and the fact that the U.S. acted without consulting its allies--angered many U.N. members and complicated the search for a successor.

U.S. officials said this isolation was, in the words of one, “the price of leadership, of being the indispensable nation” and added that the eventual selection of Annan justified the American position.

While Annan was widely seen as the U.S. favorite, the Americans were so unpopular that they could not openly back him without dooming his candidacy.

Sources close to the council indicated that the British emerged as his chief behind-the-scenes champion.

Ambassador Madeleine Albright, the designated successor to outgoing Secretary of State Warren Christopher, told reporters after the Security Council meeting that she was “delighted” by the choice. She said Christopher also thanks Boutros-Ghali for his service.

British Ambassador John Weston lauded Annan’s “very effective manner with people, his ability to build a team and show that the . . . team is more than the sum of its individual parts.”

Dejammet shrugged off questions about the earlier French opposition, saying, “If consensus has been achieved, it means everyone is satisfied.”

Longtime associates commonly describe Annan as thoughtful, soft-spoken and good-humored.

This week, when it appeared that France might veto his appointment, he joked with colleagues that perhaps he would now be speaking English with a French accent. Annan is fluent in English, French and several African languages.

Co-workers marvel that he has survived three decades of bureaucratic infighting at the U.N. without making significant enemies. Even when U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Somalia and the Balkans came under widespread condemnation, Annan escaped blame because the problems were generally attributed to policy failures of Boutros-Ghali, the Security Council and the Americans and Europeans.

While some observers wonder if, as an insider, he can bring a fresh approach to the U.N., “the only drawback of Kofi that I can think of is that he may be too nice, but maybe that’s a good thing,” one longtime colleague said.

Ronald Spiers, U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs from 1989 to 1992 and a former U.S. undersecretary of state for management, said of Annan: “He’s a guy with intelligence. He’s a man who gets along with people. . . . He knows what needs to be done. I always felt he was the single most competent person in the Secretariat. . . . His quiet integrity always shines through.”

Despite his calm, Annan can be firm and critical, associates say.

He infuriated his fellow Africans, for example, when he told the French newspaper Le Monde that he had trouble recruiting African soldiers as peacekeepers because African governments “probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations.”

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Nor did he hide his displeasure in 1993 when President Clinton decided to withdraw U.S. troops from the peacekeeping force in Somalia. Annan predicted--correctly--that, despite Clinton’s plea that others take the United States’ place, all would withdraw too.

Born and raised in central Ghana, where his father was a regional governor and businessman and his mother was a homemaker, Annan was a vice president of the Ghanaian national students union and a student at the University of Science and Technology in Ghana when the Ford Foundation selected him in 1959 for study in the U.S.

The foundation sent the young African to Macalester College in Minnesota, where he earned an economics degree. He also has a master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has studied at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva.

Before assuming the post of head U.N. peacekeeper in March 1993, Annan held posts in planning, finance, personnel management and care for refugees.

In 1990, he journeyed to Iraq shortly after the invasion of Kuwait and helped negotiate the release of Western hostages held as human shields by dictator Saddam Hussein and the repatriation of about 500,000 Asian workers stranded in occupied Kuwait--a mission he described Friday as one of the most personally satisfying of his U.N. career.

Annan is married to Swedish-born Nane Lagergren, who he said describes herself as “a resigned lawyer-turned-artist.” Her father, Gunnar Lagergren, is a noted international jurist, and her mother is the sister of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis in Hungary during World War II and who disappeared when Hungary fell under Soviet control. They have three children: Ama, 26; Nina, 25; and Kojo, 23.

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler in Washington contributed to this report.

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Profile:

Kofi Annan

Background on the next secretary-general of the United Nations:

* Age: 58

* Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.; master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

* Career: Served in various U.N. posts beginning in 1962, including administrative and budget duties; also served as managing director of Ghana’s tourism agency; in 1993, became undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations.

* Family: Married to Swedish-born Nane Lagergren, a lawyer and judge before she became a full-time painter; three children.