The UN Secretary General and Secretariat

IT is not the Soviet Union, or indeed any other big powers who need the United Nations for their protection; it is all the others. In this sense, the organisation is first of all their organisation," said Dag Hammarskjöld, the greatest of all the U.N. Secretaries-General, a few weeks before he died. He sought to make the organisation "a dynamic instrument" rather than "a static conference machinery".

His tenure in office (1953-61) saw the world body playing an effective role in Suez, Hungary, Lebanon, Laos and the Congo, where he met his death.

The U.N. Charter, drawn up at the San Francisco Conference in 1945, was based on the unity of the P-5 (the five permanent members of the Security Council). The latter fell apart before the year ended. The U.S. bypassed the Security Council, which was paralysed by the Soviet Union's veto, and activated the General Assembly, where the U.S. had a dependable majority, to serve its ends during the Cold War. By the 1990s, the Third World acquired a majority there and acted as recklessly on occasion. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the U.S. as the sole superpower made the majority in the General Assembly more submissive to the U.S.' pressures and the Secretary-General all the more careful not to antagonise it.

This book is one of the first in the "Global Institution Series". Its author, Prof. Leon Gordenker of Princeton University, has written extensively on the U.N. This monograph reflects his mastery of the subject by its conciseness, clarity and incisiveness.

It makes a timely appearance in a year in which a new Secretary-General has been elected.

The office of the U.N. Secretary-General grew only to be stunted in its growth. Men like Kurt Waldheim and Boutros Boutros-Ghali did little to enhance its prestige. A careful study of Kofi Annan's record is very necessary.

The author discusses the evolution of the office, the role of the Secretary-General as head of the Secretariat, his duties as "world constable" and his potentialities and limitations. "Although he has been allowed or asked to furnish analytical advice to the Security Council, he never has had the staff facilities, the diplomatic networks, the intelligence services of governments even in the second or third power rank. Nor did pleas for better arrangements get much sympathy from governments that masked their suspicion of international organisation with claims of sanctity or their own financial penury. Even when the Security Council mandated field missions operated with military personnel, the Secretary-General had only the slenderest staff for military advice."

The Secretary-General is compelled to be sensitive to the enormous egos of American Senators. They determine the flow of funds to the U.N., though the U.S. is bound by the Charter to pay up its dues.

"Whether the United States has fully accepted the notion of an international civil service is open to doubt. A continuing stream of opinion in the Congress opposes giving what it regards as special privileges to American nationals, such as diplomatic immunity, while on U.N. business. This stream has broadened at times to make sure that financial contributions to the United Nations include accounting for the precise use of American funds. It has also resulted in congressional decisions that reduced the United Nations to the verge of bankruptcy. This obviously has impaired the authority of the Secretary-General. Similarly, the United States for many years closely monitored appointments to the Secretariat, giving advice that would be costly to ignore."

It remains to be seen how the office evolves in the days to come, under the newly elected Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

By A.G. Noorani