NEW YORK — The jockeying for top jobs in a new U.N. administration has begun in earnest with the arrival in New York of incoming Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will take over the organization in six weeks.
Senior management in some departments will be replaced for the first time in a decade or more, forcing longtime staffers out of their sinecures and giving Mr. Ban an opportunity to remake the organization to his liking.
Mr. Ban, who stepped down last week as South Korean foreign minister, arrived at the United Nations on Thursday to take part in a transition that has been gathering steam since his unanimous selection in mid-October.
He is expected to announce his senior staff appointments — including a chief of staff and deputy secretary-general — shortly after he is sworn in as the eighth U.N. secretary-general on Dec. 14. He takes full charge of the organization on Jan. 1.
Mr. Ban has begun a round of meetings with at least three dozen undersecretaries-general and assistant secretaries-general, as well as with key ambassadors, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and trusted advisers.
The Ban team is using the meetings mainly to gather information, but for many U.N. officials, the appointments serve as half-hour opportunities to impress the new boss and keep their jobs or trade up.
“He has a battery of appointments,” said one person involved with the transition. “He wants to find out what is happening in [each] area and have a bit of look-see at these people: Can they walk and talk and shoot straight? The real emphasis is on sucking in as much info as possible.”
Of course, the source added, “There are important personnel decisions looming.”
Departing Secretary-General Kofi Annan has refused to approve long-term contracts for most senior management, leaving Mr. Ban a free hand to select his own heads of major departments. Most contracts will expire at the end of December or the end of February, according to current officials.
In the meantime, the 39-story glass-walled U.N. headquarters has been reverberating with gossip, whispering campaigns, rumors and outright disinformation.
Will Mr. Ban favor Asians or bend against them in order to seem impartial? Will he keep some top managers or replace as many as three dozen officials over the next few months? Is it true that he will consider only women for the most prominent posts? Have major nations already locked down the departments they want to run? How much influence will Washington have?
“Those who talk don’t know,” said one knowledgeable adviser, pleading ignorance. “I don’t think any decisions have been made yet.”
Mr. Ban’s advisers, most of them plucked from South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, have been absorbing information from various sources inside and outside the United Nations. People who observed him last week said he was proceeding methodically, taking in information and “truth-testing” what he hears.
The Korean diplomat inherits an organization that has been allowed to grow haphazardly as its membership and responsibilities have expanded. Staff morale has sunk over recent years in the face of the Iraq oil-for-food investigation, sex scandals in peacekeeping, widespread perceptions of bad management, lax oversight and selective accountability.
The United Nations now costs some $2 billion to run each year, and the separate peacekeeping budget is expected to nearly double to $10 billion a year by 2008.
Many are hoping that Mr. Ban, 62, will work with almost surgical cleanliness and precision to slice away the nonperformers and the underqualified. Others are fearing drastic change.
Preparations for Mr. Ban’s arrival have been under way throughout the U.N. system.
His transition team is temporarily based in a glass-walled office tower across the street from the Secretariat, a modern office space with work cubicles and constantly ringing phones.
Mr. Ban is expected to spend most of the next six weeks in New York, except for brief trips back to Seoul and at least one visit to Washington.
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