Given Kofi Annan’s PR Skills, Albright May Rue Loss of Boutros-Ghali

by Ian Williams

Boutros Boutros-Ghali began his term as U.N. secretary-general with some suspicion from many Arabs because of his involvement in the Camp David talks, which in those pre-Oslo days they regarded as a sellout to Israel. Ironically, he was finally dismissed by the United States, and the main reason was that he was not prepared to go the whole way with the Israelier-than-thou cabal in the Clinton administration.

Almost certainly, the final straw for them was his refusal to squash the United Nations report, drafted by a Dutch military officer, on the Israeli shelling of Qana. It accused the Israelis of deliberately firing on the Lebanese refugees in the U.N. camp. Of course, Boutros-Ghali also was a very useful sacrifice for Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s unhindered confirmation as secretary of state by the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms. Boutros-Ghali is now in Paris, before moving back to Cairo, and Albright, of course, is in Washington.

The new secretary-general, Kofi Annan, was Washington’s chosen candidate, although the administration did not dare say so, since Albright’s diplomatic ineptitude had ensured that, in her own staff’s words, U.S. endorsement would be the “kiss of death.” Interestingly for the future direction of U.N. policy, Kofi Annan was involved in trying to tone down or suppress the Qana report.

Albright and her press officer, James Rubin, had been pushing for Boutros-Ghali to be sacked for over a year, and had President Bill Clinton and, needless to say, Jesse Helms lined up behind her. However, none of the excuses Albright ran round the ring about the Egyptian secretary-general’s unwillingness to carry out reforms, or failure to cut the bureaucracy, ring true. On all of these matters he did as much as he could to meet Washington’s often conflicting demands. Where he failed, it was because U.S. diplomacy, in the form of Madeleine Albright herself, had not been able to persuade others.

The Clinton administration also used the U.N. and Boutros-Ghali as scapegoat for its own failures on other matters. The U.S. Rangers in Somalia, for example, were not under U.N. command, nor were the USAF aircrew who were shot down by “friendly fire” over northern Iraq, but the administration happily shoveled the blame on him.

Albright herself put literal truth in the saying about “loyal to a fault,” by backing every twist and turn of presidential policy. But of course on the Middle East, there were no twists, since this administration was straight down the line with Israel. And her press officer Rubin was, if anything, even more pro-Israeli. It was he who ran to the microphones to denounce Boutros-Ghali for merely writing to Yitzhak Rabin offering U.N. monitors in the aftermath of the Hebron massacre. If anything, Rubin’s condemnation of the secretary-general was more forceful than of the massacre itself.

Rabin to Rubin

That led to the memorable quip from Boutros-Ghali that he had sent a message to Rabin, and got an answer from Rubin. Significantly, administration sources confirmed to The Washington Post that Rubin was on the strategic planning team deciding what to do about Boutros-Ghali’s bid for a second term. No one would offer a prize for guessing which way he was pushing! He became the Clinton/Gore campaign spokesperson for foreign affairs, and now is on his way to something in State on Albright’s coattails.

Palestine’s Ambassador Nasser Al-Kidwa commented, “I think that Boutros-Ghali came to U.N. with the priority of normalizing relations between the U.N. and Israel. But of course there are detailed decisions from the General Assembly and Security Council that he could not ignore.” Recalling some of Boutros-Ghali’s bloopers, such as his early statement that Resolution 242 was not “legally binding,” the Palestinian envoy explained: “We had disagreementsbut we appreciated many positions he took on principle.”

Ambassador Al-Kidwa suggests that Kofi Annan will be in the same position of being beholden to U.N. decisions, regardless of the wishes of his sponsors. “There’ll probably be a difference of stylemore hesitancybut nothing substantially different. I don’t think he will be actively pro-Israelibut neither will he go out of his way to press U.N. principles.”

“The Israelis love him,” a close associate of Annan says. “When [Chief Military Adviser and Dutch General Franklin] Van Kappan first wrote the Qana report it was very strong and hard-hitting. It jumped to conclusions and got under people’s skins. Kofi moved in, talked to people and then took the report and massaged it into a more diplomatic form.” At the time, Annan was head of U.N. Peacekeeping, and thus responsible for the UNIFIL camp the Israelis had shelled.

Annan has had other Middle East connections.

Supporters of Boutros-Ghali accuse Annan of doctoring the report to curry favor with the Americans, but Annan’s team say that it’s just in his nature to avoid conflict. With hordes of apparently mentally deranged settlers roaming the West Bank and a Likud government that wants to support rather than certify them, there is almost certain to be a new Hebron- or Qana-style debacle in the near future, So what would Annan’s reaction be? “He’ll try to thread the needle. He’ll look for the middle ground, try not to rock the boat,” said one associate, scanning metaphors to describe someone like Annan, who has spent 30 years in the U.N. bureaucracy where squeaky wheels are soon dumped by the wayside.

Annan has, in fact, had other Middle East connectionsand is no mere pen-pusher. He served in the Ismailiya headquarters of UNEF II, the force that separated the Egyptians and the Israelis in Sinai after the 1973 war. He also helped repatriate the Asians stranded in the Gulf conflict in 1990 and brokered the food-for-oil deal with the Iraqis in 1996.

While Albright & Co. rooted for him, it is highly likely that he will soon disappoint them. Congress, Clinton and Albright share a tendency to make foreign policy based on the last lobbyist’s check, and to be surprised when the rest of the world question this free-market basis for making policy. The sheer unreasonableness of their expectations will soon lead to some form of conflict that not even the pacific Annan can finesse.

The question of funding is one. Albright said that Congress would not pay its $1.3 billion in arrears to the U.N. while Boutros-Ghali was in office. And as soon as he was ousted Jesse Helms made it plain that he wanted to see Annan’s performance on “reforms,” before acting. For Helms and his friends, reforming the U.N. means cutting itand eventually the death of a thousand cuts. To his credit, Annan has already reminded Albright that other countries, particularly from the developing world, have other agendas and wants from the U.N.

In the end it very likely will be something to do with Israel that will end the honeymoon for Annan, who will have to reconcile his almost certain attempt at a second term with what most acquaintances identify as his basic integrity and honesty. As Boutros-Ghali’s demise shows, it will not help him to refer to international law, treaties or U.N. decisions in connection with Israel.

Ironically, that would probably reveal the complete ineptitude of Albright’s “success” in getting rid of Boutros-Ghali, an austere patrician whose sacking was opposed on principle rather than personality by most diplomats. Kofi Annan is charming, friendly, accessible, and much better on television than Boutros-Ghali. All that could make him a much more formidable opponent of the Israel-firsters on the U.S. domestic political front.