Charismatic Indian career diplomat Shashi Tharoor said on Thursday that he was “deeply honoured” to be nominated by New Delhi for the top job in the United Nations.
NEW YORK CITY: Charismatic Indian career diplomat Shashi Tharoor said on Thursday that he was “deeply honoured” to be nominated by New Delhi for the top job in the United Nations.
If India succeeds in installing Tharoor as the successor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who steps down in December, it will be the first time that an Indian would head the UN in its 61-year history. The well-liked diplomat and acclaimed author is currently undersecretary-general for communications and public information at the UN headquarters in New York.
“As someone who has served the UN for 28 years and believes in the organisation, I am deeply honoured to be nominated,” Tharoor told DNA on Thursday.
Tharoor indicated that he would weave his campaign around the need to overhaul the UN — something India has pressed for strongly. “A secretary-general must conceive and project a vision of the organisation as it should be, while defending and promoting the organisation as it is,” he said.
“The UN needs reform not because it has failed but because it has accomplished enough over the years to be worth investing in. As Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world.’ To change the world, the UN must change too.”
There are ex-presidents, serving prime ministers, and crown princes eying the top job in the world, but Tharoor enjoys the edge of being India’s candidate, an Asian representative, and a well-entrenched figure in the UN bureaucracy. When Annan picked him for a cabinet position in 2001, he sent out the message that he wanted a thinking man at his side. At the UN, high officials are usually political appointees. By picking Tharoor as undersecretary-general for communications, Annan settled on an articulate strategist as the “public face” of the beleaguered UN.
Tharoor, who now has to get the backing of the five members of the Security Council - the US, Britain, Russia, France, and China - has raised his profile over the years. When the US said it would invade Iraq without the UN’s backing, it was Tharoor who went on television and defended the organisation’s reputation.
It helps that Tharoor has written eight books and been feted with the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Former US President Bill Clinton cited his book, India: Midnight to Millennium, in an address to Parliament.
Tharoor’s nomination was probably sealed when he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi in April. But the campaign picked up steam with the UN Security Council deciding a fortnight ago to bring out its first list of candidates to succeed Annan by July 15.
In a break with tradition, the council has ruled that only candidates officially nominated by member governments will figure on the list of candidates for the top UN job.
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