United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations, charged with ensuring international peace and security, accepting new members to the United Nations and approving any changes to its charter. Its powers include the establishment of peacekeeping operations and international sanctions as well as the authorization of military actions through resolutions – it is the only body of the United Nations with the authority to issue binding resolutions to member states; the council held its first session on 17 January 1946. Like the UN as a whole, the Security Council was created following World War II to address the failings of a previous international organization, the League of Nations, in maintaining world peace. In its early decades, the Security Council was paralyzed by the Cold War division between the US and USSR and their respective allies, though it authorized interventions in the Korean War and the Congo Crisis and peacekeeping missions in the Suez Crisis and West New Guinea.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, UN peacekeeping efforts increased in scale, the Security Council authorized major military and peacekeeping missions in Kuwait, Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Security Council consists of fifteen members; the great powers that were the victors of World War II – the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and the United States – serve as the body's five permanent members. These can veto any substantive resolution, including those on the admission of new member states or nominees for the office of Secretary-General. In addition, the council has 10 non-permanent members, elected on a regional basis to serve a term of two years; the body's presidency rotates monthly among its members. Resolutions of the Security Council are enforced by UN peacekeepers, military forces voluntarily provided by member states and funded independently of the main UN budget; as of 2016, 103,510 peacekeepers and 16,471 civilians were deployed on sixteen peacekeeping operations and one special political mission.
In the century prior to the UN's creation, several international treaty organizations and conferences had been formed to regulate conflicts between nations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Following the catastrophic loss of life in World War I, the Paris Peace Conference established the League of Nations to maintain harmony between the nations; this organization resolved some territorial disputes and created international structures for areas such as postal mail and opium control, some of which would be absorbed into the UN. However, the League lacked representation for colonial peoples and significant participation from several major powers, including the US, USSR, Japan; the earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the US State Department in 1939. US President Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries."On New Year's Day 1942, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Maxim Litvinov, of the USSR, T. V. Soong, of China, signed a short document which came to be known as the United Nations Declaration and the next day the representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures."
The term United Nations was first used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. By 1 March 1945, 21 additional states had signed. "Four Policemen" was coined to refer to the four major Allied countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China. And became the foundation of an executive branch of the United Nations, the Security Council. In mid-1944, the delegations from the Allied "Big Four", the Soviet Union, the UK, the US and China, met for the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, D. C. to negotiate the UN's structure, the composition of the UN Security Council became the dominant issue. France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the UK, US were selected as permanent members of the Security Council; the most contentious issue at Dumbarton and in successive talks proved to be the veto rights of permanent members. The Soviet delegation argued that each nation should have an absolute veto that could block matters from being discussed, while the British argued that nations should not be able to veto resolutions on disputes to which they were a party.
At the Yalta Conference of February 1945, the American and Russian delegations agreed that each of the "Big Five" could veto any action by the council, but not procedural resolutions, meaning that the permanent members could not prevent debate on a resolution. On 25 April 1945, the UN Conference on International Organization began in San Francisco, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental organizations involved in drafting the United Nations Charter. At the conference, H. V. Evatt of the Australian delegation pushed to further restrict the veto power of Security Council permanent members. Due to the fear that rejecting the strong veto would cause the conference's failure, his proposal was defeated twenty votes to ten; the UN came into existence on 24 October 1945 upon ratification of the Charter by the five then-permanent members of the Security Council and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. On 17 January
António Guterres
António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres is a Portuguese politician and diplomat, serving as the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. Guterres was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002, he served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years. Guterres was born and raised in Lisbon, the son of Virgílio Dias Guterres and Ilda Cândida de Oliveira, he attended the Camões Lyceum where he graduated in 1965, winning the National Lyceums Award as the best student in the country. He studied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, he graduated in 1971 and started an academic career as Assistant Professor teaching Systems Theory and Telecommunications Signals, before leaving academic life to start a political career.
Guterres' political career began in 1974. Shortly thereafter, he became a full-time politician. In the period following the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 that put an end to Caetano's dictatorship, Guterres became involved in Socialist Party leadership and held the following offices: Head of Office of the Secretary of State of Industry Deputy for Castelo Branco in the Portuguese National Parliament Leader of the parliamentary bench of the Socialist Party, succeeding Jorge Sampaio Guterres was a member of the team that negotiated the terms of Portugal's entry into the European Union in the late 1970s, he was a founding member of the Portuguese Refugee Council in 1991. In 1992, after the Socialists' third consecutive defeat in Parliamentary elections, Guterres became Secretary-General of the Socialist Party and leader of the opposition during Aníbal Cavaco Silva's government. At the time, he was the party's third leader in six years, he was selected as one of the 25 vice-presidents of the Socialist International in September 1992.
His election represented a break with tradition for the Socialists: not only was Guterres not associated with either the faction around then-President and former Prime Minister Mário Soares or the party's left wing led by Guterres' predecessor Sampaio, but he was a devout Catholic, running counter to the party's historical secularism. He sought to consult with Portugal's civil society in formulating policy, meeting a range of intellectuals and entrepreneurs from across the country and the political spectrum in the run-up to the next general election. Cavaco Silva did not seek a fourth term as prime minister of Portugal and the Socialist Party won the 1995 parliamentary election. President Soares appointed Guterres as prime minister and his Cabinet took the oath of office on 28 October that year. Guterres ran on a platform of keeping a tight hold on budget spending and inflation in a bid to ensure that Portugal met the Euro convergence criteria by the end of the decade, as well as increasing rates of participation in the labor market among women, improving tax collection and cracking down on tax evasion, increased involvement of the mutual and non-profit sectors in providing welfare services, a means-tested guaranteed minimum income, increased investment in education.
He was one of seven Social Democratic prime ministers in the European Union, joining political allies in Spain, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. With a style markedly different from that of his predecessor, based on dialogue and discussion with all sections of society, Guterres was a popular prime minister in the first years of his office. Portugal was enjoying a solid economic expansion which allowed the Socialists to reduce budget deficits while increasing welfare spending and creating new conditional cash transfer programs, his government accelerated the program of privatizations, undertaken by Cavaco Silva's government: a total of 29 companies were privatized between 1996 and 1999, with proceeds from privatizations in 1996-7 being greater than those of the previous six years, the public sector's share of GDP being halved from 11 percent in 1994 to 5.5 percent five years later. Share ownership was widened, with 800,000 people investing in Portugal Telecom upon its privatization in 1996 and 750,000 applying for shares in Electricidade de Portugal.
In 1998, Guterres presided over Expo 98 in Lisbon, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Vasco da Gama. In 1998, two nationwide referenda were held; the first one was held in June, asked the voters whether abortion rules should be liberalized. The Socialist Party split over the issue of liberalization, Guterres himself led the pro-life side, which won the referendum. A second referendum was held in this time over the regionalization of the mainland. In this referendum, both Guterres and his party supported the approval of such an administrative reform. In this second referendum, Guterres suffered a political defeat, as the proposal was rejected by the voters. Contrary to his party stance and following the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses by the World Health Organization in 1990, Guterres said, in 1995, that "he did not like homosexuality" and that he considered it "something that bothered him". On foreign policy, Guterres campaigned for United Nations intervention in East Timor in 1
Excellency
Excellency is an honorific style given to certain high-level officers of a sovereign state, officials of an international organization, or members of an aristocracy. Once entitled to the title "Excellency", the holder retains the right to that courtesy throughout their lifetime, although in some cases the title is attached to a particular office, is held only for the duration of that office. People addressed as Excellency are heads of state, heads of government, ambassadors, certain ecclesiastics and others holding equivalent rank, it is sometimes misinterpreted as a title of office in itself, but in fact is an honorific that precedes various titles, both in speech and in writing. In reference to such an official, it takes the form Her Excellency; the abbreviation HE is used instead of His/Her Excellency. In most republican nation states, the head of state is formally addressed as Her Excellency. If a republic has a separate head of government, that official is always addressed as Excellency as well.
If the nation is a monarchy, the customs may vary. For example, in the case of Australia, all ambassadors, high commissioners, state governors and the governor-general and their spouses are entitled to the use of Excellency. Governors of colonies in the British Empire were entitled to be addressed as Excellency and this remains the position for the governors of what are now known as British Overseas Territories. In various international organizations, notably the UN and its agencies, Excellency is used as a generic form of address for all republican heads of state and heads of government, it is granted to the organization's head as well, to those chiefs of UN diplomatic missions, such as Resident Coordinators, who are accredited at the Head of State level, or at the lower Head of Government level. In recent years, some international organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or the European Union, have designated their Permanent Representatives in third countries as Ambassadors, although they do not represent sovereign entities.
This is now accepted, because these Ambassadors rank after the UN representative in the orders of precedence of representatives of international organizations, the UN coming first as pre-eminent, the UN Resident Coordinators are now commonly but informally referred to in diplomatic circles as ambassadors, although the UN itself does not refer to them in this way. Judges of the International Court of Justice are called Your Excellency. In some monarchies the husbands, wives, or children, of a royal prince or princess, who do not possess a princely title themselves, may be entitled to the style. For example, in Spain spouses or children of a born infante or infanta are addressed as Excellency, if not accorded a higher style. Former members of a royal house or family, who did have a royal title but forfeited it, may be awarded the style afterwards. Examples are former husbands or wives of a royal prince or princess, including Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, following her divorce from Prince Joachim of Denmark.
Count Carl Johan Bernadotte of Wisborg, who lost his succession rights to the Swedish throne and discontinued use of his royal titles in 1946 when he married the commoner Elin Kerstin Margaretha Wijkmark, was accorded the style. In some emirates, only the Emir, heir apparent and prime minister are called His Highness, their children are styled with the lower treatment of His/Her Excellency. In Spain members of the high nobility, holding the dignity of grandee, are addressed as The Most Excellent Lord/Lady. In Denmark, some counts those related by blood or marriage to the monarch, who have entered a morganatic marriage or otherwise left the Royal Family have the right to be styled as Your Excellency, e.g. the Counts of Danneskiold-Samsøe, some of the counts of Rosenborg and the Countess of Frederiksborg. Excellency can attach to a prestigious quality, notably in an order of knighthood. For example, in the Empire of Brazil, it was attached to the highest classes, each time called Grand Cross, of all three imperial orders: Imperial Order of Pedro I, Imperial Order of the Southern Cross and Order of the Rose.
In modern days, Knights Collar and Knights Grand Cross of the Spanish Orders of Chivalry, like the Order of Charles III, Order of Isabella the Catholic, Order of Civil Merit, Order of Alfonso X the Wise, Royal Order of Sports Merit, Civil Order of Health, as well as recipients of the Grand Cross of Military and Aeronautical Merit are addressed as such. Furthermore, Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great and the Order of St. Sylvester of the Holy See, Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Knights Grand Cross of several other orders of high prestige, are addressed as Excellency. By a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Ceremonial of 31 December 1930 the Holy See granted bishops of the Roman Catholic Church the title of Most Reverend Excellency. In the years following the First World War, the ambassadorial title of Excellency given to nuncios, had begun to be used by other Catholic bishops; the adjective Most Reverend was intended to distinguish the religious title from that of Excellency given to civil officials.
The instr
Charter of the United Nations
The Charter of the United Nations of 1945 is the foundational treaty of the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization. The UN Charter articulated a commitment to uphold human rights of citizens and outlined a broad set of principles relating to achieving ‘higher standards of living’, addressing ‘economic, social and related problems,’ and ‘universal respect for, observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, language, or religion.’ As a charter, it is a constituent treaty, all members are bound by its articles. Furthermore, Article 103 of the Charter states that obligations to the United Nations prevail over all other treaty obligations; the Charter was opened for signature on 26 June 1945 and was signed at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, United States, on 26 June 1945, by 50 of the 51 original member countries. It entered into force on 24 October 1945, after being ratified by the original five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the Republic of China, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom, the United States—and a majority of the other signatories.
In the meantime, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place on 6 and 9 August, respectively. Most countries in the world have now ratified the Charter. 24 October was declared as United Nations Day by the United Nations General Assembly. The Charter consists of a series of articles grouped into chapters; the preamble consists of two principal parts. The first part contains a general call for the maintenance of peace and international security and respect for human rights; the second part of the preamble is a declaration in a contractual style that the governments of the peoples of the United Nations have agreed to the Charter and it is the first international document regarding human rights. Chapter I sets forth the purposes of the United Nations, including the important provisions of the maintenance of international peace and security. Chapter II defines the criteria for membership in the United Nations. Chapters III–XV, the bulk of the document, describe the organs and institutions of the UN and their respective powers.
Chapters XVI and Chapter XVII describe arrangements for integrating the UN with established international law. Chapters XVIII and Chapter XIX provide for ratification of the Charter; the following chapters deal with the enforcement powers of UN bodies: Chapter VI describes the Security Council's power to investigate and mediate disputes. Chapters XVI through Chapter XIX deal with XVI: miscellaneous provisions, XVII: transitional security arrangements related to World War II, XVIII: the charter amendment process, XIX: ratification of the charter The Preamble to the treaty reads as follows: WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINEDto save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,AND FOR THESE ENDSto practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS.
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations. Although the Preamble is an integral part of the Charter, it does not set out any of the rights or obligations of member states; the Purposes of the United Nations are To maintain international peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, for the
1981 United Nations Secretary-General selection
A United Nations Secretary-General selection was held in 1981. Kurt Waldheim ran for an unprecedented third full term as Secretary-General, losing to Salim Ahmed Salim by one vote. However, the selection deadlocked through 16 rounds of voting as China vetoed Waldheim and the United States voted against Salim; the Security Council settled on a dark horse candidate who stayed home and did not campaign. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was selected for a term beginning on 1 January 1982, becoming the first Secretary-General from Latin America; the deadlock was broken by a system of straw polls, an innovation that became the standard method for selecting a Secretary-General in future open selections. Waldheim's defeat confirmed the informal two-term limit on the office of Secretary-General, Pérez's selection established the principle of regional rotation; the Secretary-General of the United Nations is appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council. Therefore, candidates for the office can be vetoed by any of the permanent members.
In 1981, Kurt Waldheim of Austria was finishing up his second term as Secretary-General, despite Chinese preferences for a Secretary-General from the Third World. In the 1971 selection, China preferred Felipe Herrera of Chile and vetoed Waldheim twice before abstaining. In the 1976 selection, China voted for Luis Echeverría Álvarez of Mexico and cast one symbolic veto against Waldheim. However, Waldheim crushed Echeverría in the second round by 14 votes to 3, China voted for Waldheim. On 11 September 1981, Waldheim announced his candidacy for an unprecedented third full term as Secretary-General. No previous Secretary-General had served more than two full terms. Although U Thant had been selected three times, his first two terms were short terms that added up to one full term; as Waldheim campaigned for re-selection, he received the endorsement of the United Kingdom and unofficial support from the United States, the Soviet Union, France. However, Waldheim left Beijing empty-handed, China again insisted that the next Secretary-General must come from the Third World.
Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania was the only other candidate to be nominated. Salim was the President of the General Assembly and had the endorsement of the Organisation of African Unity and the Non-Aligned Movement, which added up to a majority of the votes in the General Assembly. In the Security Council, he could count on China to veto the incumbent. However, Salim was opposed by the Reagan administration in the United States, which regarded him as an anti-American radical, hostile to South Africa and supported Palestinian statehood; the Soviet Union opposed Salim for his activism and his pro-China stance. However, the U. S. veto would allow the Soviet Union to abstain so that it could avoid voting against the Third World. Diplomats expected both candidates to receive the nine votes needed for selection as Secretary-General. However, the United States was expected to veto Salim, while China announced that it would veto Waldheim. Diplomats believed that China would change its veto to an abstention, as it had done in 1971 and 1976.
On 27 October 1981, the Security Council met in closed session to select a Secretary-General. Salim won the first vote with 11 votes to Waldheim's 10. However, Salim was vetoed by the United States, Waldheim was vetoed by China. Support for Salim dropped until he received only 6 votes in the fourth round, as diplomats believed that the United States was irrevocably opposed to Salim's candidacy. However, China continued to veto Waldheim, the Security Council adjourned after four ballots; the Security Council voted twice more on 28 October 1981 and held another two ballots on 4 November 1981. Waldheim received 10 -- 11 votes. However, China continued to veto Waldheim, the United States continued to veto or vote against Salim. Vice President George H. W. Bush led the opposition to Salim, who had led the cheering in the General Assembly when Ambassador Bush lost a key vote on the Chinese seat at the U. N. in 1971. Meanwhile, Salim promised to act impartially if he became Secretary-General, as he would no longer have to represent his own country's interests as a Tanzanian delegate.
Although he opposed apartheid, Salim said, "One is not secretary general of all nations minus South Africa, or anyone else."On 12 November 1981, U. S. representative Jeane Kirkpatrick checked into the hospital after suffering chest pains on a flight between Washington and New York City. After Kirkpatrick was released from the hospital, the Security Council met again on 17 November 1981 for a final effort. In eight rounds of voting, Waldheim dropped to his worst showing so far. Salim managed 9 votes in the first two rounds and returned to his usual 8 votes. China and the United States each remained opposed to the other country's candidate. Jeane Kirkpatrick described the situation as "a deadlock within a deadlock." The Security Council could not decide on a Secretary-General, but the Third World countries would not nominate any other candidates as long as Salim remained in the race. However, Salim would not withdraw from the race unless Waldheim withdrew. Waldheim's aides claimed that they had been "deceived" by the Chinese into believing that there would only be a symbolic veto.
Carlos Ortiz de Rozas of Argentina, who had defeated Waldheim in the 1971 selection but was vetoed by the Soviet Union, expressed his opinion that no Secretary-General should serve more than two terms. Waldheim's supporters criticized him for allowing his personal ambition to damage the prestige of the Secretary-Generalship by seeking a third term. U. S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick suggested that the Security Counc
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a Soviet statesman who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, for several liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in 1894 in the village of Kalinovka, close to the present-day border between Russia and Ukraine, he was employed as a metal worker during his youth, he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. With the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy, he supported Joseph Stalin's purges, approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, he continued the purges there.
During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. On 5 March 1953, the death of Stalin triggered a power struggle in which Khrushchev emerged victorious after consolidating his leadership of the party with that of the Council of Ministers. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered the "Secret Speech", which denounced Stalin's purges and ushered in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union, his domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were ineffective in agriculture. Hoping to rely on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchev's rule saw the most tense years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies. This emboldened his potential opponents, who rose in strength and deposed the Premier in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the deadly fate of previous Soviet power struggles, was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside, his lengthy memoirs were smuggled to the West and published in part in 1970. Khrushchev died in 1971 of a heart attack. Khrushchev was born on 15 April 1894, in Kalinovka, a village in what is now Russia's Kursk Oblast, near the present Ukrainian border, his parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Xeniya Khrushcheva, were poor peasants of Russian origin, had a daughter two years Nikita's junior, Irina. Sergei Khrushchev was employed in a number of positions in the Donbas area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, labouring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, Sergei Khrushchev left his family in Kalinovka, returning there when he had enough money.
Kalinovka was a peasant village. Nikita worked as a herdsboy from an early age, he was schooled for a total of four years, part in the village parochial school and part under Shevchenko's tutelage in Kalinovka's state school. According to Khrushchev in his memoirs, Shevchenko was a freethinker who upset the villagers by not attending church, when her brother visited, he gave the boy books, banned by the Imperial Government, she urged Nikita to seek further education. In 1908, Sergei Khrushchev moved to the Donbas city of Yuzovka. Yuzovka, renamed Stalino in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961, was at the heart of one of the most industrialized areas of the Russian Empire. After the boy worked in other fields, Khrushchev's parents found him a place as a metal fitter's apprentice. Upon completing that apprenticeship, the teenage Khrushchev was hired by a factory, he lost that job when he collected money for the families of the victims of the Lena Goldfields Massacre, was hired to mend underground equipment by a mine in nearby Rutchenkovo, where his father was the union organiser, he helped distribute copies and organise public readings of Pravda.
He stated that he considered emigrating to the United States for better wages, but did not do so. When World War I broke out in 1914, Khrushchev was exempt from conscription because he was a skilled metal worker, he was employed by a workshop that serviced ten mines, he was involved in several strikes that demanded higher pay, better working conditions, an end to the war. In 1914, he married daughter of the lift operator at the Rutchenkovo mine. In 1915, they had a daughter, in 1917, a son, Leonid. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, the new Russian Provisional Government in Petrograd had little influence over Ukraine. Khrushchev was elected to the worker's council in Rutchenkovo, in May he became its chairman, he did not join the Bolsheviks until 1918, a year in which the Russian Civil War, between the Bolsheviks and a coalition of opponents known as the White Army, began in earnest. His biographer, William Taubman, suggests that Khrushchev's delay in affiliating himself with the Bolsheviks was because he felt closer to the Mensheviks who prioritised economic progress, whereas the Bolsheviks so
1996 United Nations Secretary-General selection
A United Nations Secretary-General selection was held in 1996 at the end of Boutros Boutros-Ghali's first term. Boutros-Ghali ran unopposed for a second term and received the support of 14 of the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council. However, the United States vetoed his re-selection and forced him to withdraw his candidacy; the open selection deadlocked as France vetoed all candidates from English-speaking countries, while the United States vetoed all candidates from French-speaking countries. France changed its veto to an abstention, Kofi Annan of Ghana was selected Secretary-General for a term beginning 1 January 1997; the 1996 selection marks the only time. The elderly Boutros-Ghali intended to serve only one term, but he ran for a second term in 1996. Traditionally, the Secretary-General is entitled to run unopposed for a second term. No sitting Secretary-General had been denied a second term by a veto. In the 1950 selection, Trygve Lie was vetoed by the Soviet Union, but he was re-appointed by the General Assembly without a recommendation from the Security Council.
In the 1976 selection, Kurt Waldheim received a single symbolic veto from China, which turned around and voted for him in the second round. Boutros Boutros-Ghali had been selected Secretary-General in 1991 without the support of the United States, which abstained. After 15 U. S. peacekeepers died in a failed raid in Somalia in 1993, Boutros-Ghali became a political scapegoat in the United States. U. S. ambassador Madeleine Albright criticized Boutros-Ghali for the failed raid, U. S. president Bill Clinton announced that future U. S. peacekeepers "will be under American command." However, the dead peacekeepers had been under U. S. command. Tensions grew worse as Boutros-Ghali pressed the United States over $1.5 billion in unpaid U. N. dues, while the United States pushed him to cut programs that were favored by developing countries. The breaking point came over the Bosnian War, when Boutros-Ghali refused to allow British and French commanders to authorize airstrikes against Serb troops. During the 1996 U.
S. presidential campaign, Republican candidate Bob Dole made fun of Boutros-Ghali's name, Clinton decided to eliminate Boutros-Ghali to help in his own reelection bid. Boutros-Ghali ran unopposed for re-selection, as he enjoyed the support of every other member of the Security Council and was backed by the developing countries in the General Assembly. Boutros-Ghali had the support of France, as he spoke French fluently and had studied at the Sorbonne. Supporters of Boutros-Ghali hoped that China would fight a veto duel with the United States, as it had done in the deadlocked 1981 selection. If the 1996 selection could be deadlocked the General Assembly could appoint Boutros-Ghali to a second term without a recommendation from the Security Council; the United States had set the precedent by taking the 1950 selection directly to the General Assembly after the Soviet Union vetoed Trygve Lie's second term. Madeleine Albright, Richard Clarke, Michael Sheehan, James Rubin entered a secret pact, which they called "Operation Orient Express."
The name reflected their hope that other countries would join the United States in overthrowing Boutros-Ghali. However, U. S. President Bill Clinton told them that they "would never pull it off."As support for Boutros-Ghali grew, the United States increased the pressure on his supporters. U. S. officials threatened to "take action" against U. N. officials who campaigned for Boutros-Ghali using U. N. funds though it could not name anyone who had done so. An unnamed U. S. official warned in a United States Information Agency report that continued support for Boutros-Ghali would cost Africa its second term in the Secretary-General rotation. The United States offered to support Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania, vetoed by the U. S. after winning the 1981 selection by one vote. A former U. N. official said that the Clinton administration appeared to be in a "frenzy" over Boutros-Ghali's resistance. On 17 November 1996, U. S. ambassador Madeleine Albright asked Boutros-Ghali to resign and offered to start a new foundation in Geneva for Boutros-Ghali to run.
Other Western diplomats called the offer "ludicrous," as Boutros-Ghali's family was wealthy and supported several foundations in Egypt, while Albright would have a hard time convincing the U. S. Congress to pay for a foundation. Boutros-Ghali said that he was not looking for another job. On 18 November 1996, the United Nations Security Council conducted a straw poll to gauge the level of support for Boutros-Ghali; the vote was 13–1–1, with only the United States voting against. The United Kingdom delegation abstained. On 20 November 1996, the Security Council met in closed session to consider draft resolution S/1996/952, appointing Boutros-Ghali for a second term; the resolution received 14 votes in favor, 1 vote against, no abstentions. The only negative vote was the promised U. S. veto. The U. S. veto was criticized by foreign diplomats, who referred to it as a "mugging." Boutros-Ghali complained that he was not "Noriega or Saddam Hussein" and compared the United States to the Roman Empire. CNN founder Ted Turner said that "Even England voted to re-elect this man and England always does what the United States asks them to do."
British diplomat Brian Urquhart described members of the U. S. Congress were "very xenophobic touchy, and, I think ignorant," and said that the Secretary-General "isn't supposed to be a member of the State Department." The conservative New York Post criticized Clinton for "indulg an obsession" and "demonstrat extraordinary diplomatic
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