New York Times
August 2, 1998
UNITED NATIONS -- It is election season at the United Nations, and campaign-finance reform provokes even less enthusiasm than it has in the U.S. Congress.
The campaign for one of the five seats up for election each year on the Security Council has brought some imaginative gestures by some of the 185 U.N. members.
A couple of years ago, when Sweden was pitching hard for a seat, a staid diplomatic dinner party at the elegant New York town house of Consul General Dag Sebastian Ahlander was interrupted by a blast of saxophones from the pantry. A band just off the plane from Stockholm -- all women, in black leather -- burst into the dining room to jazz up the evening.
That was also the year when Portugal put on an extravagant food festival -- and a lot of diplomats and officials from Third World nations got trips to Japan and Japanese watches. "Overkill," one diplomat called it, since Japan was already favored to beat India in a contest for an Asian seat. Japan, as well as Sweden and Portugal, were elected.
This year, Greece turned the heads of even blase diplomats. Competing for a seat against the Netherlands and Canada, two rather more restrained nations, Greece invited U.N. delegates on a trip to look over some Olympic sites, hear about a plan for declaring an international truce to mark the 2004 Olympic games, which will take place in Greece, and then relax on an Aegean cruise.
Dimitri Gemelos, a spokesman for the Greek Mission to the United Nations, insists that the trips -- there were two, because more than 120 diplomats and relatives accepted the invitation -- were not related to Greece's bid for a Security Council seat.
"We tried to convince people that it was not that, but most people thought it was a campaign for candidacy of the Security Council," he said. "I do not see the correlation."
The Security Council has 15 members. Five permanent seats belong to the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia. The 10 remaining places -- now held by Bahrain, Brazil, Costa Rica, Gabon, Gambia, Japan, Kenya, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden -- are filled by elections in the General Assembly and rotate within regions: five from Africa and Asia, one from Eastern Europe, two from Latin America and the Caribbean and two from a hybrid group known as "Western Europe and other." That includes New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
Australia and New Zealand really want to join the Asians, but "Anglo-Saxons" are not yet welcome in that club. Israel has not been invited to join any group, and cannot hope to be elected to the council any time soon. At least 75 other countries have never held a seat.
Rotating terms are for two years, with five seats surrendered each year so that there is always an overlap. Asians have already agreed that when voting takes place in the fall, Malaysia will take the seat to be vacated by Japan. Argentina will replace Costa Rica. Africans have chosen Namibia to replace Kenya.
Europeans are much less disciplined about coming to an agreement, said Robert Zaagman, first secretary at the Dutch mission. They take the battle down to the wire.
The Dutch had a cruise, too, but it was on the East River in New York. "We're not just talking about cruises," said Zaagman, whose government has not sought a Security Council seat since the mid-1980s, when the competition was not so intense. "In general the amount of high official time invested seems to have gone up a bit. Now you see armadas of special envoys traveling around the world. "The Security Council has become much more active and much more of a player since the paralysis of the Cold War ended."
Like others, the Dutch have heard all the rumors about expensive gifts changing hands and brown envelopes left in hotel rooms during junkets. They like to think they can win election on their sober record of good international works and do not need sweeteners. "For us, giving cars or computers would never be part of the deal," Zaagman said.
Danilo Turk, Slovenia's representative, also said he noticed a growing intensity in the competition for Security Council seats. "The level of competitiveness has been rising since 1992," he said. "A lot of campaigning is going on, and it takes a lot of time and energy." Last year, Slovenia became the first of the former Yugoslav republics to win a seat. Turk, a former professor of international law, led the charge against Macedonia and Belarus.
Sometimes the smaller nations get wistful about the way big powers do not have to bother. "That's the comfortable situation of permanent members," Turk said. "Nonpermanent members have to work much harder."
