UN

Low-Profile U.N. Chief Struggles as Diplomatic Peacemaker
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2008; Page A15

UNITED NATIONS -- In the days after Georgian and Russian troops
marched into the separatist province of South Ossetia, Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon frantically telephoned key leaders and offered the
United Nations' diplomatic help in stemming further violence. But
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev refused to take his calls for more
than a week, say senior U.S. and U.N. officials.

The rebuff highlighted Russia's displeasure with Ban, who had clashed
with Moscow over Kosovo's independence drive and riled it again by
issuing a statement supporting the territorial integrity of Georgia, a
nation Russia intended to carve up. It also provided another example
of the humbling struggles of the world's top diplomat to prod foreign
leaders to embrace peace.

After more than 20 months in office, Ban is straining to make his mark
as a diplomatic peacemaker as his efforts to stem bloodshed in Sudan's
Darfur region have faltered and Burma's political players refuse to
meet with his special envoy. The United Nations has been relegated to
a supporting role in many of the world's diplomatic flare-ups,
including in Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Ban convened a meeting of key foreign ministers Saturday on the
sidelines of the General Assembly session to energize efforts to press
Burma's generals to democratize the country and to secure the release
of nearly 2,000 political prisoners, including Nobel laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi.

But the meeting, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not
attend, produced no breakthrough, and Ban canceled plans to speak to
the media. Instead Ban issued a statement, pressing Burma to release
the prisoners.

Behind the scenes, Ban has resisted calls from the United States,
Britain, Singapore and other countries to travel to Burma to meet with
military ruler Senior Gen. Than Shwe in December, fearing it might end
in failure. There is a risk of Ban "going and coming back
empty-handed," a close aide said.
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"No one is going to make a case that we are in the middle of a big
diplomatic breakthrough on some of these cases you've mentioned," said
Robert Orr, a special adviser to Ban. "But the fact is that is not the
nature of this business. These things move quietly until they break
into the open. The secretary general's style is to work very hard,
persistently, behind the scenes" to achieve that.

Orr and other U.N. officials say Ban has had far greater success in
prodding governments on some long-term threats such as climate change
and the global food and energy crises and in helping to secure
billions of dollars in commitments to fight poverty during the world's
worst financial crisis in a generation. They say his persistence paid
off after Tropical Cyclone Nargis in May, when he traveled to Rangoon,
the former Burmese capital, to persuade Than Shwe to pry open the
borders for relief workers.

But Ban has been pushed into the background in Africa, where local
powers have taken the lead in solving regional problems. South Africa
effectively blocked a U.S. and British initiative to grant the United
Nations a more central role in mediating an end to an election crisis
in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe cracked down on opposition
leaders to prevent his more popular rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, from
winning the election.

At the height of the crisis, Mugabe told Ban to butt out of his
country's affairs and accused him of carrying water for the region's
formal colonial power. But Mugabe ultimately agreed to a compromise
that gave the United Nations a supporting role in a diplomatic process
led by his friend Thabo Mbeki, who was South Africa's president at the
time.

Ban's low-profile diplomatic style contrasts with the activism of his
predecessor, Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian national who sought to expand the
authority of the office. At a similar stage in his tenure, Annan had
carried out a high-profile trip to Baghdad, where he temporarily
averted a U.S.-led air war by persuading Saddam Hussein to open his
presidential palaces to U.N. inspectors. That peace was short-lived,
and the United States and Britain launched Operation Desert Fox, a
four-day air war against Iraq, several months later in 1998.

"It is possible that Ban's decision, for whatever reason, to keep away
from those extremely melodramatic settings may be prudent," said James
Traub, author of "The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the
Era of American World Power." "But it also has the effect of reducing
his size in the world. There can't be any question he is a smaller
figure than Kofi in his secretary generalship. That's just a fact,"
Traub added.

When violence erupted in Kenya after a disputed presidential vote, the
African Union recruited Annan to help restore calm. He assembled a
team of former aides and helped hammer out a power-sharing deal.

"To his credit, Ban asked Kofi what he needed, and Kofi said, 'Staff.'
Ban said, 'Take what you want,' " said Fred Eckhard, a former U.N.
spokesman brought in by Annan to handle the media during the Kenya
crisis. "It was indeed an all-U.N. effort but led by Kofi."

In Darfur, Ban has been in control, cultivating a relationship with
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to help secure support for a
U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission and a political settlement.
But fighting has resumed, political talks have stalled, and the
peacekeepers' deployment is months behind schedule.

Ban's ability to engage in direct talks with Bashir, meanwhile, has
been curtailed since the International Criminal Court's chief
prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for the Sudanese leader on
charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Ban's attorneys have
instructed him to limit contact with Bashir unless it is urgent, a
senior U.N. official said. "We have to be very careful about our
dealings with him," the official said.

The setbacks have begun to take a toll on Ban, who lashed out at his
senior advisers during a retreat in Turin, Italy, for failing to make
the organization more responsive to the challenges of the day.

"Our job is to change the U.N. -- and through it, the world," Ban told
his staff members last month. "This is the big picture. I am
frustrated by our failure, so often, to see it."