Secretary-General Candidates Fail in Bid to Make U.N. Hearings Boring

Montenegro’s foreign minister, Igor Lusic, delivers his presentation for his candidacy for U.N. secretary-general, April 12, 2016, New York (U.N. photo by Rick Bajornas).
Montenegro’s foreign minister, Igor Lusic, delivers his presentation for his candidacy for U.N. secretary-general, April 12, 2016, New York (U.N. photo by Rick Bajornas).

Few analysts have lost money betting on a United Nations debate to be dull. There are exceptions. Fans of U.N. diplomacy cite the time in 1960 that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on the table during a heated General Assembly session. Harold Macmillan, the patrician then-British prime minister whose speech Khrushchev interrupted, paused to ask for a translation from the Russian. Such moments of multilateral hilarity are sadly rare, however. So I felt all too comfortable last week when I predicted that a series of General Assembly hearings with candidates for the post of U.N. secretary-general would fall […]

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