A set back internationally for New Zealand Progressives
António Guterres (picture), the former prime minister of Portugal, will lead the United Nations after a rare show of unity between the two most powerful security council members, the US and Russia.
This appointment due to be announced at any moment dashes the single most ardent hope of New Zealand progressives who sincerely believed that former premier Helen Clarke would be appointed.
Helen Clarke, a campaigner of Clintonesque proportions in her long campaign also sincerely believed that she had more than a fighting chance. Even in spite of The (Manchester)Guardian in an unusual tilt at one of their own roundly denouncing her campaigning while still an employee of the UN.
Even so, Miss Clarke administrator of the U.N. Development Programme, impressed the broader constituency of U.N. staff, earning the most-favored status for secretary-general in a 1,000-person U.N. survey taken last February.
New Zealand internationalists will have to be content with Terence O’Brien who was President of the United Nations Security Council during the war in Yugoslavia.
While in New York, his leadership was a critical factor in New Zealand's securing a seat on the United Nations Security Council, despite competition from more favoured countries such as Spain and Sweden.
Mr O’Brien remains an indefatigable fixture on the Wellington diplomatic cocktail scene, and is known for generously contributing his wisdom when and where it is required..The loftiest heights in the UN from the New Zealand point of view remain scaled by Sir Leslie Munro, who reached the top in three quite different vocations.
Farming, (he was a founder of the National Party, journalism (editor of the NZ Herald) and then diplomacy.
As New Zealand's permanent representative to the UN, he served as president of the Trusteeship Council from 1953 to 1954 and President of the United Nations General Assembly for its twelfth session (1957–1958). He was also three times President of the Security Council, and was serving in that position at the outbreak of Suez Crisis in 1956.
From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - Friday 7 October 2016
