hankyoreh

Permanent Representative of South Korea to the U.N (right) and Edward Luck

The first-ever Korean U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, started his five-year tenure on January 1. In late December, the Hankyoreh arranged a discussion between Choi Young-jin, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations, and Edward Luck, professor in the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University. The two discussed the changing face of the U.N. under Ban Ki-moon's leadership.

[Note: Some comments have been edited for clarity and cogency, whereas overall content has not been altered.-Ed.]

Choi: What are your expectations of Mr. Ban?

Luck: Well I think expectations are rising, which may not be good for him. Initially, people were not sure what to expect, but now that they have seen more of him, they are more confident in him, and so I think their expectations have risen quite a bit. He has a major job in healing in the organization, both among the member states and between the secretariat and the member states and I think [people] get a sense that that is something he will be good at and they are very much expectant of it.

Choi: What about the rift among member states, and between member states and the secretariat?

Luck: Well, I think there is a strategic problem now in the world generally, in that there is an enormous imbalance of power. And when you have one superpower, one dominant power, that makes it very hard to design multilateral decision making to work right, and so many countries have worried that the U.S. is somehow controlling everything. That, I think, is a piece of the problem. In addition to that, there are just so many issues on the agenda now in different parts of the world, and different countries see them very differently - which should be priorities and which should not be priorities. And then we have the perennial problem in the U.N., which is how you make decisions when you have so many countries, 192. And if you try to do that in small groups, that makes some of the countries very worried what is being done behind their back, and there are some traditional problems between the North and the South on to whether there should be more emphasis on security issues or more emphasis on development issues. So I think in a sense people are trying to have the U.N. be all things to all people, and it can't, and one of the things the secretary-general has to do is get the organization to set priorities and to choose. But he has to do that in a very open kind of way to maintain the trust of the member states. And I think he has already begun to the heal the divide between the secretariat on the one hand and the member states on the other. Some of the things he said even today in his speech suggested he was looking for a new era in the relations between the secretariat and the member states. He has been stressing openness, a sense of accountability, a sense that he works for all member states and that they all have to be involved, they all have to have a voice. And that plus his emphasis on strengthening the secretariat and human resources I think will go a long ways toward healing the rift between the member states and the secretariat. I think the good news is that whenever there is a change of leadership, there is a new opportunity. And right now, people are sort of licking their wounds from last year. There were some very divisive debates. But I detect on all sides that now that there is a feeling they can begin to move forward a little bit. And they don't expect him to be a miracle worker, but they do think that this is the time where real progress may be possible.

Choi: What about the North-South divide? How seriously will it affect the work of the United Nations and is it replacing increasingly the East-West divide?

professor in the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University.

Luck: Well [for] one thing, in the Cold War we knew who was on which side and things were carefully defined. Now it's quite messy. We certainly have a deep divide between North and South; between the richer countries and the poorer countries. I think one of the reasons people are hopeful about Ban taking this position is that Korea's own experience, from being a developing country to becoming a developed country, is a pattern that others would like to follow. And even in his lifetime, he has seen a rather poor country as a developing country, and now as quite a successful developed country. And so I think [people] have a sense he may have some empathy for them. And that, I think, could be a very good thing in terms of healing some of these divides. But I think we should remember some of these divides are South-South divides, and some of them are North-North. Outside of a simple equation about geography, it has a lot to do with national interest, the kind of government and the level of economic development.

Choi: You mentioned Korea's being in a specific position, having transformed from a recipient to a donor country, from underdeveloped to developed country, and the link really connecting Ban to the people. Will this reflect his actions?

Luck: I think it will, and I think in the way he says things and approaches them. I think it's hard to say, just listening to what he says, exactly where he is from, because I think [he has] a sort of universal message, which is very good. The other thing that is important on this [matter] is that in the selection process, it was not clear he was the candidate of any particular major power. Kofi Annan was widely seen as a [U.S.] candidate, Boutros Ghali was seen as a French candidate, it looks as if Ban Ki-moon is an international candidate. And that's a very good thing; that, plus the fact that he has a more than two month transition period, which gives him the chance to build some relationships with member states and to get their trust, and that, I think, makes a big, big difference.

Choi: What are the right relations between Secretary-General Ban and South Korea? They expect a lot from him.

Luck: Well I hope the Korean people will continue to feel that he is one of them, that he represents their values. But at the same time he has been loaned to the international community, the world has adopted him as an offspring of the world, not just Korea. And traditionally, secretary-generals don't deal very much with issues directly affecting their homeland. For example, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who had been for most of his life in the foreign ministry of Egypt, got involved a bit in Somalia, and some of the groups in Somalia resented this because they remembered the history of which side Egypt was or wasn't on, and that made it very difficult for him to be a mediator there. And so I know that publicly, Ban has said several times that he would like to continue his involvement in mediation with the North, which is an enormously important issue, not only for Korea but for the world, it might be better that he let that be delegated to others. There are other special envoys or representatives that he might appoint to do that. The one exception I would see is that if the leaders of North Korea were specifically to ask Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to give his good offices to them, but I think that is something he probably would not expect, because obviously for them to see the Foreign and Trade Minister of South Korea become the world's leading diplomat is sort of embarrassing…for him to come up in that role. So I'm sure this is going to be difficult for him, and that is something the Korean people have to get used to as well. But he now has to be a man of the world.

Edward Luck

Choi: What will be the challenges he'll be facing next year? Iraq may come under the aegis of the United Nations, Africa as a whole presents a problem, are these more or less the biggest issues?

Luck: Well those [issues] are certainly very prominent and may dominate much of his time. One thing I think secretary-generals discover is that they come in with a plan of action to set priorities and an agenda, and pretty soon they find out that their time is being dictated by things on the ground that are very much not expected. But I would say with all of these crises that there is more of a sense of unity among all of the major powers than there has been at many points in the past. It is very imperfect, but there is a degree of cohesion within the Security Council that we haven't seen for a long time. But with the high expectations that Mr. Ban is going to be facing, the U.N. itself is going to be facing some high expectations. A number of peacekeepers have been deployed around the world, the numbers reaching an all-time high. Some of these are in very dangerous and unstable situations. I think of Lebanon, for example. It is very important that the blue-helmeted peacekeepers be there, but at the same time, things could very easily go wrong. There is a hope that more U.N. peacekeepers will go to Darfur. That certainly is another difficult kind of situation. It would be nice if the U.N. was given stable, easy, predictable jobs to do, but it's always given the most difficult jobs. So I think there is a sense that the U.N. is very exposed, it's trying to do many things at once, as usual more things than it really can handle, and there are going to be some failures along the way as long as victories and successes. And I think one of the ways of judging a secretary-general is how he handles things when they don't go well. And I have no doubt that some of these will not go well because that is the nature of the world, and the U.N. is not a miracle worker and no secretary general can be, either.

First of all, one has to prevent the conflicts in the Middle East from escalating. They are very, very dangerous and there is the possibility over time of nuclear weapons being involved, [as well as] terrorism, instability, and enormous energy resources that many countries around the world are dependent on. […] So certainly it's a very dangerous situation. He can't simply stand back and try to manage from a great distance. He's going to have to be fairly deeply involved, but of course many member states, regional organizations, and others are involved, as well, so he won't be alone, and I think in many ways [he will be] looking for those targets of opportunity where some quiet mediation can help, where he really can make a difference. There may be things between Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt - that cluster of countries - where there may be some opportunities over time. Perhaps with Syria, as well. Certainly there are questions about Iran and about its nuclear weapons that are very pressing, and certainly with his experience on North Korea, I'm sure he feels very knowledgeable on those issues, and people will expect him to focus on those a fair amount. In addition to that, obviously the situation in Iraq is very, very difficult, and one hopes it doesn't become untenable, and there is some fear around the U.N. of the U.S. facing a very difficult situation there, and [that the U.S.] might be tempted to drop that problem into the U.N.'s lap. And that of course is not an easy thing for the U.N. to take on, so that is going to be difficult.

Choi: Yes, talking about Iraq, and the transfer of the problem to the United Nations, which is a distinct possibility now. How likely is it that the Iraq problem will be coming to the United Nations next year, or in a couple of years?

Luck: I'm sure that the U.S. and others will want the U.N. to take a bigger role, and I think the U.N. will have to calibrate where it can and see how it can help. Obviously, as Kofi Annan has said several times, the most painful moment in his 10 years as secretary-general was the explosion on August 19, 2003, and [the death of] Sergio Vieira de Mello, and twenty some of the U.N. staff and secretariat. On the other hand, those are the risks that the U.N. has to take. But I think the thing that people in the U.S. have to remember is that handing something to the U.N. does not relieve the U.S. of responsibility. The U.S. remains the largest, most powerful country in the U.N., it is part of the U.N., so at best the U.N. can help share those burdens, it can't relieve them entirely. But if you look even at the plan of this Iraq Commission, it envisions the Security Council along with regional powers and others being involved, so it could be that the U.N. would be part of a broader coalition, just on the central problems in the Middle East it's part of the quartet. It's not alone, but its part of the quartet, and in each case we have to see which part of the problem the U.N. can deal with the best, and where it has less to offer.

Choi: Talking about Africa. We have a number of crises there: Eritrea, the possibility of conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia, the huge problem of Congo, along with Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Western Sahara. It seems the whole continent is boiling with problems; what is the appropriate approach for Secretary Ban? His predecessor was from Africa, so people saw him as having more of an insight into issues there.

Luck: Well, we think of the Middle East and Africa as the two areas which could [single-handedly] absorb all of the secretary-general's time. I think that with Africa, there are real opportunities that come along where the U.N. can and has made a big, big difference. The Middle East is a little tougher, but in Africa - as you say rightly, there are many places of turmoil - there are other places where the U.N. has helped a great deal: Namibia, Mozambique, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, there are many places where the U.N. has made a positive difference. And so, I think it's a question of first looking for partners like the African Union, which is an important regional group, which you don't have in the Middle East, a diverse regional group. It needs resources, but I think that this partnership can be built upon. There's also a long history that one can look to, and again, you can't do everything, but the U.N. is deeply involved in places like the Congo. But you really, I think, have to see through to the end, and again, the secretary-general has to look for special envoys to help carry the mediation burden, and see whether some member states would take the lead in trying to help with some of these African conflicts. I mean, I think the good news is that I don't think there is any single core problem in Africa, as there is in the Middle East, and while most of the problems in Africa are very difficult, they are in some ways more tractable, more feasible for the organization to undertake, and that is the reason I think that the council spends so much time there, it's because it has been able to make a positive difference there in some cases.

Choi: Talking about Darfur, and outgoing Secretary Kofi Annan, he had difficulties in Rwanda, also difficulty in Bosnia, in Darfur. Now the region will have a big risk in Darfur again, and Kofi Annan tried really hard to secure peacekeeping forces there before the end of his term. So Secretary Ban, as he takes up his office, has an immediate crisis on his hands. What is the best solution?

Luck: Well, a new secretary-general offers a new opportunity if the Sudanese regime wants to take advantage of it. For example, the very fact that Ban Ki-moon does not have a long history in Africa could be an advantage, and the fact that he is not African might be an advantage. In fact, it might be face-saving for Bashar and some of the leaders in Somalia. And you also now have the "responsibility to protect" as a doctrine, accepted now by all the member states, which is something Kofi Annan worked very hard on for many years, so now I think there is a wider acceptance of the fact that this is the appropriate thing to do. The problem, of course, is getting the regime to agree on it, and if they don't, I don't think it very likely that the U.N. is going to try and force itself in there militarily. But the AU has taken a pretty significant burden there and maybe with the right balance of U.N. blue helmets and AU peacekeepers and some resources behind them, maybe peace can come together. It's not an easy one, obviously, but the world demands, and our consciences demand, that the very best efforts be made there.

Choi: Going back to Lebanon, South Korea has agreed to contribute a battalion of infantry forces, and will be sending troops in the field, in 2007 perhaps. What are the dangers and what are the possibilities of success there?

Luck: Well, UNIFIL is particularly difficult at this point in time because it's not a static situation, it's very dynamic, and you don't have a peace agreement among the parties, and some of the most important parties are not states - Hezbollah in particular - so it makes it a very difficult situation. The Lebanese people themselves of course fought a very long and damaging and bloody civil war, so there are deep, deep divisions there, and this is the risk for any peacekeepers. I'm pleased so far that there has not been any major incidents, and the resolution of the Security Council, 1701, is very broad, it has many, many tasks, and some of them, such as disarming Hezbollah, they are going sort of lightly on - they realize it's not feasible - so as the U.N. forces develop a little more confidence, as they develop more relationships with the people, one hopes you can move step by step. But fundamentally, as with Iraq and many other places, this is a political problem, and if the politics can be solved, then the security will not be so difficult. If the politics cannot be solved, then the security will be impossible. And we're sort of in a limbo now on the political front, and it’s certainly not only from the secretary-general, but from everyone else trying, and it is going to take a lot of political and diplomatic management to try and handle that situation.

Choi: Talking about peacekeeping operations in general, which is a growing business. As of last year, PKO projects by the U.N. were in the budget area of $5 billion per year. And with the possibility of peacekeeping missions in Darfur, the U.N. will be approaching a record of 100,000 peacekeeping troops.

Luck: Well, I think if you think of peacekeeping operations broadly, they may well be the biggest business of the U.N., not only in terms of the numbers, but in terms of where it can make a big difference. But if you think back, there was a time when peacekeepers were simply military forces put between two sides that had been warring and wanted to resolve their differences…and it was fairly predictable. It was also fairly narrow, because people discovered over time that you don't need only soldiers; you need civilians and all kinds of functions. Humanitarian functions, rebuilding governments, legal systems, the whole question of justice, particularly when terrible human rights violations have occurred, preparations for elections, the holding of elections, dealing with civil society, rebuilding economies, the whole development side. So it's a very, very broad spectrum, and pretty soon, what one thinks of as peacekeeping, one realizes, involves almost everything that the U.N. does, because one of the legacies of Kofi Annan is a very correct concept, that development, security, human rights, and the rule of law all have to fit together. And really, in essence, now what we used to call peacekeeping is in fact that combination of things, and put very often in very difficult places. So I think there's a very big challenge, but I think it’s one that could really mark the U.N. as the only organization that's really able to do this, that has the kind of broad agenda, the broad kind of expertise, and the universal membership. But one must also think that there may be some problems. One is of course that it is not always easy to get these forces. It is sometimes hard for the Security Council to negotiate a resolution to mandate a peacekeeping force, but that's only half the battle. The much bigger battle is in trying to get the troops. I mean, to begin with, there aren't as many troops as there used to be. With the Cold War, there were rather large armies, but most countries have backed away [from this], so you don't have as many soldiers available to begin with. Second of all, this requires a very large number of police - not just soldiers but police. Which is even harder. There is very little reserve, they are there to handle local problems. And then, as you suggested, there has been an enormous shift. If you look at 1993, 1994, the biggest troop contributing countries were from the developed world. Now they are all developing countries. South Asian countries provide the greatest number of forces. It was France, Britain and Ireland and the Nordics and Canada, I mean those were very big traditional peacekeeping countries in the '60s, '70s and '80s. Now it's a very, very different situation and many of these [participants] are excellent soldiers and well commanded, but they don't always have all the resources that they need, and they don't have the traditions of working together in the field, and that sometimes is difficult…

Choi: Could you discuss the Millennium Development Goals?

Luck: Well, obviously, the Millennium Development Goals are very important on the development side, they really define the development piece of it, but they're also very important, I think, on the human rights [side], because poverty is not something that people should be perpetually faced with, and if you have no capability to feed your family, to get proper employment, you really can't enjoy your human rights, and very often it becomes a security problem. It's not true that the most impoverished countries are the most likely to have conflict - that hasn't actually been the case - but where there are huge differences within countries, between the rich and the poor, or huge differences between one country and its neighbors, that creates imbalances, that may create refugee flows, that may create problems in terms of expectations. I mean obviously on the Korean peninsula itself, huge differences between the wealthy successful South and a very poor and unsuccessful North. And so I think we tend to see that the countries that respect human rights, that respect the rule of law, that are open, tend to be those that develop well, and that can, over time, provide security at the same time.

Choi: You are saying interdependent? On top of these global problems, we are facing next year several issues: one is the U.N.-U.S. relationship, and the other is the reform of the U.N. Shall we talk about the U.N.-U.S. relationship first?

Luck: The U.S. relationship with the U.N. has always been awkward. The U.S. feels since they were the major intellectual and political force in putting the U.N. together back in 1945, they feel sort of paternalistic towards the U.N. And when the U.N. doesn't act as the U.S. expects, when it goes in a direction that makes Americans unhappy, the U.S. doesn't know how to react to it. And now the U.S. at least from the terms of economic capacity is so much larger than other countries, it makes it difficult for the U.N. to ignore the U.S. But I think each administration in the U.S., be it Republican or Democrat, when they actually perform or practice foreign policy, they realize they need the U.N. And I've been struck by how active the Bush administration has been in the Security Council. I happen to be a Democrat and I don't agree with their policies, but on the other hand if you look at their attitude to the U.N. when they took off in 2001 and to their attitude to the U.N. now, they are much more engaged and much more positive. And soon we are going to see a new U.S. permanent representative here. The other question of course is the Congress. We know by now that we have a Democratic Congress, and traditionally Democrats have been more positive towards the U.N. than the Republicans. But I think the good news is that while Americans are often critical of the U.N., often properly so, we think it's part of our role to criticize international institutions, we feel it's our responsibility, which is the natural way. But at the same time the Americans are coming to accept whether they like it or not, whether the U.N. is effective or not, they want to succeed. They believe very much in internationalism; there is no room for isolationism anymore. There is recognition that the U.N. is a big part of the furniture, of the international relationship. And like an important piece of furniture, you have to have it. And like most pieces of furniture, you don't appreciate it always, but you have to have it, you always pay attention to it, and you certainly recognize when it's not there. And I don't think there's any worry that the U.S. is going to run away from the U.N. For Ban Ki-moon, it's going to be very interesting. I'm glad that he doesn't seem to be an American candidate. In fact, in many issues he was very different from the U.S. position, his views on North Korea, for instance, were very different from the American position. I think that's very healthy. But on the other hand, he has spent a lot of time in the U.S. He understands American politics, and I think there would be a good relationship there. It would not be perfect. The U.S.-U.N. relationship is not a perfect marriage. But I think it's a marriage that's going to last. Sometimes Americans in Congress may want a scapegoat, and that may happen now and then. But I also hope he has thick enough skin not to be bothered too much.

Choi: You mention certainly the U.S. is the most powerful country in terms of military capacity. Economically also. And the U.S. is bound to lead. But the U.S. does not pay its dues. As of now the U.S. owes 1 billion dollars to the U.N. The U.N. will be bankrupt tomorrow. How does it feel about its reluctance to pay?

Luck: I've been around the U.N. so long, I was around when the U.S. always paid its dues, but I was around when it was in very very deep arrears. Right now it's somewhere in between. The U.S. paid very late in the year even though money should be due beginning in the new year. And some of these payments are upcoming, I'm sure. But the U.S. by size would be a natural leader. On the other hand, [much of] U.S. political culture makes it a somewhat exceptional country. The other thing is that a leader needs power. Because the U.S. is so powerful, the other countries are reluctant to follow. If the U.S. proposes an initiative, some others pull back. It is a lot of counterbalance…I think the U.S. could do a better job in terms of financing the U.N. But we have to remember, that the U.S. is the largest contributor to the U.N., and even though it sometimes doesn't pay all of its dues, it makes a lot of voluntary contributions to the U.N., particularly to those projects. I think leadership would be very difficult for the U.S. and the U.N. And I think we have to understand the difference between power and influence. I think the U.S. has a lot of power but not a lot of influence, particularly in the U.N.

Choi: You mention that the obligation of the secretary-general sometimes makes him a scapegoat, receiving criticism from the U.S. But if you look very hard, you see that it's the Security Council more than the general assembly. The secretaries-general realize it's not fair, because members of the Security Council could not agree on reform measure, but criticism on reform failures is destined to come to him. There is a certain feeling of unfairness.

Luck: I hope that doesn't happen. With the food scandal, very difficult for Kofi Annan particularly because his son had been involved in it. It was very difficult because integrity has always been very important to him. And it's right to say the most of the responsibility lay in the member states. On the other hand, the secretary-general is the symbol of the organization. One year, he receives the Nobel Prize along with the organization, the next year he is criticized deeply. I don't know much about Korean politics, but I see that Korean leaders are attacked much in the press and they don't stay long. In the U.S., we do the same things, we attack our leaders and we charge them with very high expectations. Two things I would like to say on this point. The secretary-general should not take these attacks personally. And the other is that he should not be obsessed with the U.S., and with criticisms from the U.S. And sometimes both Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan, they got obsessed. They felt they had to respond to the attacks from Congress, but I think they should have been above the frame. They had the world [as their diplomatic arena]. They can't play with all the countries all the time. If they can get the job done that's all we can expect.

Choi: People say that the U.N. faced failures regarding reform within the peace-building commission, and the human rights council. But people say the real reform is about the Security Council. But on all accounts, the reform was not realized. People say in the next few years, Ban will put measures forth for reform, but not in the first six months, which will be virtually impossible. But how can he perform magic?

Luck: I have tried reform for many years, particularly with Roger Middleton Shelford. But first of all, you seem to understand that the U.N. reform has to be an ongoing process all the time. For any organization. Evolution. You have to keep working on it. Secondly, there is only so much territory the secretary-general can control. Most of it is the management of the Secretariat itself. And the general assembly tries to micromanage a lot of these issues. The secretary general cannot dictate the workings of the intra-governmental bodies. Most secretary-generals have not been involved in the composition of security councils. Boutros-Ghali himself said he didn't want to be involved. I instead worked with the president of the general assembly Mr. Razali Ismail in 1996-97, and I don't recall the secretary-general being involved at all. It's really the president of the general assembly and the member states coming to an agreement. That I think was the right way to go about it, I don't know what Kofi Annan would say today, but certainly he found it frustrating, putting together models of reform of the security council. It's enormously important. But it is so sensitive for the member states, and they're so deeply divided on the issues, so I don't think there's much room for the secretary-general other than to say, "I'll facilitate things when I can, but I'm not going to tell you how." And soon, [Ban is] going to have to forget what the South Korean position has been…And during the selection process, people will say this person from this country might take this position, another one might take this position; at the end of the day, they all have to back away, because it's too difficult. The other thing is you can't wait for the secretary-general to tackle all the issues. Management reform is urgent, and the secretary-general has to be achieving something in the big issues. Unfortunately in the last reform, big differences occurred between the member states and the secretary-general. Big differences between developing countries G77 in the general assembly. But my sense is, from talking to the member states, that many of the member states do want a new beginning. They have their positions, issues, but they are willing to allow a honeymoon period. Particularly on management issues. It's up to the secretary-general. So they have to give him a little flexibility. And he has to understand, and the big donors must understand, that a bargain must occur at San Francisco. That the general assembly has signing authority on a few things, including the budget. It is a one nation, one vote system. One has to work with that process. I think it is do-able, but it's not easy. I think in terms of the honeymoon period, in the beginning every secretary-general has to face restructuring of the top post. So he or she gets the kind of balance, people to do the job he or she thinks of as appropriate. But the longer-term management issues will take more time. Because they require a new relationship with the secretary-general. I think that can be done, but it will take some time. That's not for him to dictate, but to listen. And that seems to be Mr. Ban's real strength. Because I know he's listening, and I appreciate that.

Choi: Regarding the San Francisco bargain, the U.N. is 62 years old. The interest group is so entrenched…

Luck: That's a good point. It took World War I to form a world league of nations, it took World War II to form the U.N., we can't afford WWIII…But I tend to be an optimist. I also tend to have a long-term perspective. The U.N. has changed enormously since 1945. It's a very flexible, adaptable organization. New challenges come up, and it finds a way to meet them. It looks like a very different place from 1945, the agenda is much broader, and in many cases it is also deeper. Flexible. But certain intra-governmental bodies are very difficult to change. The Security Council has been extended once. From 11 to 15 members, and my guess is at some point, in 4-5 years from now, maybe some expansions, to take account of the growing membership. But at the same time, the Security Council has changed in an enormous way. Involvement of non-members in the council, for example. Almost all of them had been non-permanent members. There are real changes underway. It's not a moribund organization. People would like to say it's the same U.N. as 1945, same Security Council of 1945, but I don't think so. I think it changed in many dynamic ways. The founders, of course, didn't want change. […] So amendment is very difficult. Adaptation. It may not be the perfect balance, but at the end of the day, no one is thinking seriously that the U.N. should go… [It has more tasks] than ever before. Even in the US, where many are critical of the U.N., a very large majority, including conservatives and Republicans, say they want the U.N. to be effective, they want the U.N. to play a major role in the world. And so it seems to me the organization proved itself, even though it failed many times. If the U.N. doesn't have an answer, no one else seems to have one. It won't get rid of terrorism, it won't feed everyone, but it's working on it. Thank God it is trying to do it.

Choi: So Ban Ki-moon will officially leap from Korea on to the world stage. What are the elements of success for a secretary-general? You mentioned that the role of listener is very important…

Luck: I think the first thing is that the secretary-general has to be very sure of himself. Self-confidence and not allowing others to define one's self. Because the U.N. has 192 members, there are interest groups and NGOs. The secretary-general must be at peace with himself. People get the sense that Ban Ki-moon is like that. On top of that, the secretary-general has to be communicative, the secretary-general has to be a mediator, he also has to be a manager. We need stronger management than we had before. Someone who listens first, who considers all the views and then decides in a decisive way. People tell me that's the way Ban Ki-moon operates. So I think his prospects are very good, but they're not assured.

Choi: Be at peace with himself, very good expression. We should also remember the secretary-general's position of having a unique moral authority. But what will be Ban's challenges?

Luck: His personal dealings have to be without any particle of suspicion, without any favoritism whatsoever. Integrity is extremely important, something people see and feel. I think the secretary-general also has to have a certain sense of modesty. Humility and keeping things in perspective. I agree. But sometimes people [perceive] nothing other than member states [pursuing their own interests]. I think it's important that the secretary-general does not look down on member states having interests [near to them]. There's nothing immoral about that, about protecting the interests of their people. Sometimes the secretary-general may get preachy, seeing the world from a higher moral plane - this must be avoided. Integrity and moral authority will come. But trying to put together all the pieces and interests of everyone? No one can do that.

Choi: So, demeanor and general attitude. But as a secretary-general, you have international crises on your hands, so what the secretary-general or what he doesn't say has a lot of weight.

Luck: Enormous point. No question about that. It's striking how often leaders of major powers come to the secretary-general to say, "don't say this, say that." If that isn't power, I don't know what power is. [In some cases] the secretary-general doesn't have traditional power, but he can have enormous influence with ideas, and values. And influence in a way no one else has. So the secretary-general is a pivotal figure in international relations.

Choi: Thank you for your wisdom and useful advice. Thank you very much.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]