Ban says he’s tired of U.N. bashing

NEWSMAKER INTERVIEW:

UNITED NATIONS | On the eve of the annual meeting here of world leaders, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon complained that he is perceived as “invisible” and that neither he nor his organization gets enough credit for efforts to reform and to alleviate global ills.

The United Nations is “underappreciated” by governments and often the press, Mr. Ban said, in part because the world body doesn’t trumpet its successes. Member states, he added, are often the root causes of the organization’s all-too-frequent deadlocks.

“There is unfair criticism,” Mr. Ban told The Washington Times in an interview. “We are dependent on the resources given by member states. There is a huge lack of political will to support the United Nations. It’s easy to criticize.”

But Mr. Ban, the first Asian secretary-general since U-Thant of Burma served from 1961 to 1971, acknowledged that his own reticent style contributes to the impression that he and the organization he heads are not particularly effective.

“My problem is that I do not talk too much,” he told The Times late last week. “I’m just seen as invisible. … We have [had] many distinguished secretary-generals. … They have done their best, and I’m doing my best. I’m sure I’m doing even more in terms of time and energy, but I do not make it known. I just do what I need to do.”

Throughout the U.N. system - a vast bureaucracy with offices on every continent and 192 capitals to answer to - there are concerns that Mr. Ban is too isolated in his decision-making, falling back on a management style better suited to the South Korean Foreign Ministry he used to run rather than a raucous global enterprise.

He has sought to satisfy the United States - which contributes 22 percent of the organization’s $3.8 billion annual budget - by pressing for reform and stricter ethical standards. But his efforts to bring transparency and accountability often have been thwarted.

For example, the U.N. Development Program rejected his request to pay reparations to a whistleblower as required by a U.N. ethics committee; top managers have filed financial disclosure forms, but none save Mr. Ban has made them public; and efforts to improve cooperation between departments have been hampered by familiar turf wars.

In Turin, Italy, this summer, during an annual meeting of senior U.N. officials, Mr. Ban ripped into his team for failing to make progress on reform.

“We often complain that member states micromanage us. But I have found over the past 20 months that it is more us, rather than member states, who are the micromanagers,” he said in remarks that were quickly leaked to the press. “We must change our U.N. culture. We must move faster. Simplify. Deregulate. Decentralize.”

In the interview in his wood-paneled office overlooking the East River and the Queens skyline, Mr. Ban vented his frustration that the organization has been so difficult to reshape.

“Last year when I led by example, nobody followed,” he said sadly, referring to filling out financial disclosure forms. But he asserted that progress had been made. “Now almost all senior advisers above the director level have done so” even though the documents have not been made public.

In large public settings, Mr. Ban sometimes seems wooden, with heavily accented English overshadowing a mastery of the language accumulated during years in top diplomatic posts after earning his master’s degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

In private, he can be charming: the voice clearer, the thoughts profound and well-articulated.

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