Portugal's former PM Antonio Guterres still leads race for UN Chief after fifth ballot

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres continues to lead the race to become the next United Nations Secretary-General after a fifth UN Security Council secret ballot on Monday, diplomats said.

The 15-member council cast a ballot for each of the remaining nine candidates with the choices of: encourage, discourage or no opinion. Guterres again received 12 encourage, two discourage and one no opinion, diplomats said.

Guterres, who was prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and served as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015, also won the first four rounds of secret balloting by the Security Council.

Former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic came in second with eight encourage, six discourage and one no opinion, while Slovakia's Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak was third with eight encourage and seven discourage.

The Security Council will hold secret ballots until a consensus is reached on a candidate to replace UN Chief Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who steps down at the end of 2016 after serving two five-year terms.

The council will hold the next secret ballot on October 5, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said. He said during that vote, the ballots cast by the five veto powers - the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia - would be a different colour from the votes of the remaining 10 council members, though they remain anonymous.

This allows candidates to see if they could be facing a veto.