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Dr Kamal Wickremasinghe

After many months of speculation as to which of the candidates would succeed in the race to replace Kofi Annan as United Nations (UN) Secretary General, it is becoming clear that Sri Lanka’s official candidate Jayantha Dhanapala will not be the ’chosen one’.

Most probably, by the time the Lankaweb readers get to read this despatch, the selection of South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon as the next UN Director General would have been announced: the vote of the 15 member UN security council scheduled for Monday to confirm Mr Ban is a formality, given that 14 out of the 15 members of the security council backed him in a straw poll last week. Crucially, all five permanent members of the security council, who each have a veto that could have ended his chances, have supported him. After the security council agreement, his selection goes to the 192-member general assembly for a further vote, expected about the middle of next week. The general assembly is expected to rubber-stamp the security council's choice, as it has done in the past.

This outcome does not bring any surprises to those who monitor the UN Security Council processes, including the ‘appointment’ of its Chief Executive: Mr Dhanapala never stood a chance.

The archaic selection process consisting of a sequence of informal ``encourage,'' ``discourage'' or ``no opinion' ' votes by the security council members (based on the Masonic practice of ‘black-balling’ rather than merit-based selection) can only be described as ’bizarre’. These informal straw polls count the number of positive and negative votes the candidates can muster and the last one featuring coloured ballots indicates whether a candidate is opposed or supported by one of the five veto-wielding members of the council (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States). A negative vote from one of the permanent members would eliminate the candidate!

These overtly non-democratic processes are put in place, and are being exploited by the same forces who advocate democracy worldwide. They are put in place specifically, to keep eminently suitable and decent people like Mr Dhanapala out of the job because the duties of the position is to divert and manage world opinion while the US and other imperialists violate freedoms of the peoples the world over. (This is why we are being bombarded about 'periodically moving' trouble spots in different parts of the world, the current focus being Darfur: anywhere but Palestine, seems to be the strategy!)

The fact that the selection process is corrupt and Mr Ban was not the best candidate is supported by senior officials at the UN. They have expressed despair at the prospect of Ban Ki-moon becoming the next secretary general. These officials, who have requested anonymity on the grounds that they would be working for Mr Ban, have portrayed him as ‘more secretary than general‘, happier with the minutiae of administrative detail than broad strategy, and a man given to platitudes. The diplomats have also described Mr Ban as ‘a bit opaque’: though he has been campaigning for the post since last year, he did not have a programme for his first five years, except a vague platform of support for UN reform, transparency and the free market. Some missions at the UN are busily offering policy suggestions!.

The 62 year old Mr Ban though, appears to have the right credentials from a US perspective: he won a US-sponsored English contest at school that allowed him to travel to America to meet President Kennedy, a encounter Mr Ban claims inspired him to enter public service. He has also attended the John F Kennedy school of government at Harvard. The (UK) Times newspaper also reported that South Korea, as part of a campaign to help Mr Ban, had pledged millions of dollars in aid to countries with seats on the security council. These ranged from an $18m education grant to Tanzania to the gift of a grand piano to Peru.

It is transparent that John Bolton, the US representative at the UN (the most rabid member of the neocons who manipulate the US official position at the UN and elsewhere) was actively pushing for Ban’s appointment. Bolton declared his hand during the process by saying that the US had a clear preference among the current seven candidates and would lean toward Ban: '' "I've known him for over 15 years, and think very highly of him," Bolton said. He also pushed for a quick appointment (most probably because his own dubious initial appointment for one year is due to end soon).

To understand the current US machinations at the UN, one needs to be appraised about John Bolton and, the group he represents and their usual ‘modus operandi’ that may include friendly attempts of persuasion including inducements of various kinds and lying. Failing these, they resort to threats, coercion and the use of their financial might and spy infrastructure to create financial chaos and civil strife in impoverished countries.

So who is John Bolton? He is the most rabid of the neocons and current US representative at the UN (not fully legally appointed, but through a ‘recess appointment‘). The group Bolton belongs to has effectively ‘run’ the US (definitely the US foreign policy) since the 1950s, but only came to public knowledge since the collapse of the USSR and US became the only ‘superpower’ (at least in their minds), and to sharper focus since the Iraq invasion debacle.

This group, god-fathered by people like Henry Kissinger, Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson and Leonard Strauss and their prodigies in Douglas Rumsfeld, Richard Pearle, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremmer got the US involved in Vietnam, blamed it all on Nixon, made the US Gulf policy obscenely unjust and one-sided against the Palestinians, and most recently, orchestrated the invasion of Iraq on bogus ‘weapons of mass destruction’ concerns and by lying to the UN through General Colin Powell.

They were the architects of the document 'Project for the new American Century' which they sent to President Clinton in 1998, which pushed the view that "American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN security council". Bolton was one of the signatories to this diabolical document.

Bolton is easily the most rabid member of this one-eyed group of people who is leading the US from one disaster to another. Before joining the George W.Bush administration, Bolton was Senior Vice President for Public Policy Research at the 'American Enterprise Institute' the snake-pit and the breeding ground of this brand of people.

Bolton’s nomination as US ambassador to UN was the subject of a prolonged filibuster in the US Senate. During the ritualistic US Senate ‘hearings’ on nominees to public office, the DemocratJoe Biden compared sending Bolton to the UN to sending a "bull into a china shop," and expressed "grave concern" about Bolton's "diplomatic temperament" and his record: "I've never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton. ... I don't have a second, third or fourth in terms of the way that he abuses his power and authority with little people". Former State Department intelligence chief Carl. W. Ford called Bolton a "serial abuser" . The New York Times reported that Bolton's former boss, Colin Powell, was personally opposed to the nomination.

Despite all this damning ‘endorsements‘, his backers manipulated Bush to surreptitiously install Bolton via 'recess appointment‘.

The North Korean leader Kim Jong Il clearly (and some might say accurately) expressed his opinion of Bolton who was in-charge of the multilateral talks on North Korea’s suspected development of nuclear weapons: in response to Bolton’s description of the communist leader Kim as a "tyrannical dictator" and that "life is a hellish nightmare" for many North Koreans, Kim called Bolton "human scum". North Korea's official news agency KCNA also declared that "We have decided not to consider him as an official of the U.S. administration any longer, nor to deal with him“. Bolton’s enthusiastic backing of Ban shows that he is smarting from the ‘frank’ assessment of the north Koreans!

Prior to his appointment to the UN, Bolton has been a harsh U.N. critic, blaming its supposed ‘failures’ on weak leadership. In 1994 he said, "There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States". He also said that "The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference". Despite these comments, in a paper on U.S. participation in the UN, John Bolton conspired "the United Nations can be a useful instrument in the conduct of American foreign policy". The agenda is clear!

Bolton is also infamous for his attempts to physically threaten and emotionally blackmail bureaucrats within the US and UN systems: in 2002, Bolton is said to have flown to Europe to demand the resignation of Jose Bustani, head of the Organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons (OPCW), and to have orchestrated his removal at a special session of the organisation. The United Nations' highest administrative tribunal later condemned the action as an "unacceptable violation" of principles protecting international civil servants.

During the preparations of the neocon designed and orchestrated Iraqi invasion, many in the US spy community have complained that Bolton tried to spin spy reports to support his views and political objectives. Greg Thiellmann, of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), who was assigned as the daily intelligence liaison to Bolton, stated to the investigative journalist Seymor Hirsch that, "Bolton seemed troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear". According to current and former colleagues, Bolton withheld information that ran counter to his goals from Secretary of State Colin Powell and from Powell's successor Condoleezza Rice on many occasions.

According to a 15 November 2005 article ‘Can the U.S. find a substitute for the U.N.?’ in The Washington Times, Bolton advocates "a revolution of reform" at the UN. Specifically, he called for:

The five permanent members of the UN security council to work more closely to craft powerful resolutions and make sure they are enforced, and to address the underlying causes of conflicts, rather than turning them over to the Secretariat and special envoys;
A focus on administrative skills in choosing the next secretary-general; and
A more credible and responsible Human Rights Council.
Bolton warned that the U.S. had the option of relying on regional or other international organisations to advance its goals if the U.N. proves inadequate.

Now Bolton has his man to implement this agenda, ( and other projects such as Iran and north Korea) whether or not he manages to subterfuge the US systems to stay in his job: Just a week ago, the Senate shied away from a vote to confirm John Bolton for a longer lease on his currently temporary job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that no committee meeting had been scheduled to take up the controversial nominee.

Sri lanka or Mr Dhanapala need not despair. Historically, the position of the UN Secretary General position has always been filled by a ‘lap dog’ of the neocon lobby in the United States, usually a man from a developing country with the right marital connections. Provided the incumbent conformed to the behavioural conditions set by them, he (no ‘she’ so far) will also get a second tenure, the only exception to this rule being Mr Bhutros-Bhutros Ghali.

The current incumbent Mr Annan has been exceptionally well-behaved according to these dictates (by being silent and doing nothing about issues such as the illegal US invasion of Iraq and Israeli bombing of Lebanon) .Whenever Annan attempted to even mildly rebuke the offenders, he was threatened with various contrived ‘scandals’ such as the Rwandan genocide and his son’s involvement in the Iraqi oil trade, reminding him that the mansion full of servants in the ritzier part of New York and a pile of tax-free money is at stake.

Sri Lankans are generally known in international circuit for their ethical, open and questioning approach to issues - nourished by their Theravada Buddhist heritage. Dhanapala, despite a successful track record at the UN, probably ruled himself out of this position during his disarmament work with Iraq and obviously did not qualify on the all important selection criterion for the job; subservience.

He can wear this ’failure’ as a badge of honour that topped off his distinguished career at the UN!

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