U.N. delegates fume at call for smoking ban

Over at the United Nations, they’ve grown accustomed after almost 60 years to a lot of useless debate and discussion. Not that the diplomats haven’t done a lot of good over the years, but the U.N. is a place where demands, edicts, bulletins, resolutions -- you name it -- are issued, then promptly ignored by everybody on the planet.

Now that they’ve put weapons of mass destruction on the back burner, though, the 191 members of the General Assembly have something new to fret about: a ban on smoking in the landmark U.N. building.

In September, Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a bulletin asking diplomats and staffers to refrain from lighting up. Annan apparently had many influences.

Primarily, he was hoping to place the buildings, which sit in an international zone, in accord with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s draconian edict against smoking in all offices and indoor public places in just about all of New York City.

But Annan wasn’t just trying to be a good guest and get the diplomats to obey local laws; he was also offering them political cover.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed at the U.N.’s own World Health Organization that puffing delegates were not displaying the spirit of the agency’s global campaign against tobacco.

It also turns out that the fire insurance premiums for the U.N., which lacks a sprinkler system, have gone through the roof.

As well, a certain influential CNN bureau chief, who has covered the U.N. for more than a decade, has spent that long waging a war on smokers in the airless buildings on the East River.

So Annan ordered ashtrays unbolted from the walls, anti-smoking signs every few feet in the halls and security guards to confront violators.

Of course, the world’s chief diplomat was roundly ignored. Smoking continues -- in the corridors, delegate lounge and, most conspicuously, in the basement Vienna Cafe, where fuming functionaries huddle under no-smoking signs.

The Russians, Mexicans, Czechs and Syrians have also taken official umbrage over the ban in several committee meetings, nitpicking over its legality and the cost of cleaning ashes off the carpets now that the trays are gone.

It all comes down to the power of the secretary-general. Although he is the chief administrator at the U.N., everybody knows he’s not really in charge. “If the members of General Assembly said the building had to be painted blue, the secretary-general would have to do it,” one of his aides admitted dryly, pointing out that Annan is usually given a free hand unless he runs up against something the diplomats really care about, say, their immunity against paying parking tickets.

The U.N. headquarters, a museum of mid-20th century architecture, is its own little isle, a civilized one, and the epitome of politesse and order. Walking the carpeted, overheated halls always feels like a journey onto the set of a 1950s public television show where men wearing nail varnish discuss the minutiae of world events in hushed tones.

The smoking ban temporarily has changed that. The tone has gone from PBS to sitcom.

Several times last week Sergey Lavrov, the powerful Russian ambassador, could be seen in the august corridors carrying his own glass ashtray in the palm of his hand. On Tuesday, he stood outside the domed General Assembly hall gesturing with an unlit cigarette.(The Assembly had just voted overwhelmingly for the 10th consecutive year to condemn the decades-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Naturally, the U.S. will ignore the vote.)

Lavrov is not a man to mess with. Tall and darkly handsome at 53, he could be cast in the Cary Grant role in any number of movies. He is one keen diplomat, at his best negotiating the text of a resolution or explaining why Annan has absolutely no authority over him or any other representative in the Assembly, which had passed its own resolution three years ago limiting smoking to certain areas of the building.

“I think the energy of the secretary-general would be much better used on a different problem,” said Lavrov drolly, impeccable in a three-button suit and rimless glasses.

On Iraq, for instance?

Oh no, no. Lavrov was speaking of the last tense negotiation between the city and the U.N. Over parking.

The diplomats, after piling up unpaid tickets for years, agreed to pay the fines if they were allotted two parking spaces on the street in front of their missions.

Holding forth in rapid, idiomatic English, Lavrov made it clear he would smoke wherever and whenever he pleased, unless his habit somehow stood in the way of his tennis game.

Asked if he smoked in other public places in New York, he reared back: “Of course not.” Pause. “Unless a restaurant proprietor invites me to. Which they often do.”

Smoking, it seems, is a new way to display power in New York. No one would dare stop a well-known Wall Street mogul from flicking his cigar ashes on the white tablecloth of a restaurant. And certainly no envoy, say, from a small island in the Pacific, would stop a Lavrov from lighting up.

More than one ambassador said Bloomberg’s jihad against smoking is yet another illustration of unique (read: nutty) American values. Only in New York would government try to lasso the Marlboro Man.

A British aide said she saw alignments in this debate: Diplomats from Western and Northern European nations seem to line up behind Annan and the mayor; Eastern and Central Europeans and Asians think this stuff is folly.

But it is a question of principle, not morality, for the secretary general, himself an aficionado of a good Cuban cigar, his aides say.

Shashi Tharoor, a U.N. spokesman, recalls once bringing Annan the World Health Organization’s “Tobacco Free Day” proclamation to sign. Annan was behind his desk, smoking a cigar. Tharoor uncomfortably asked his boss, normally an elegant man, if it would be a good idea for cigar smoke to swirl around his face as Annan signed the WHO ban.

The diplomat calmly replied that he saw no problem: After all, Annan explained, “I know the evil of which I speak.”