UN leader race heats up; US wants quick decision

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 (Reuters) US Ambassador John Bolton pushed for a quick resolution to the race to succeed Kofi Annan as UN secretary-general, a move that could favor a South Korean front-runner.

UN Security Council members conduct another informal vote today among seven declared candidates, which could show whether South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon retains the lead he held in two previous straw polls.

''We are at the point where we should make a decision,'' Bolton told reporters yesterday, adding a new secretary-general, who would take office on January 1, needed a transition period.

In a sign of possible Bush administration's support for Ban, Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill defended the South Korean as a ''very very consummate professional,'' after a congressman faulted the UN candidate for being too pro-China.

Hill, chief US negotiator with North Korea, told a US House of Representatives committee hearing he had worked closely with Ban and considered him not pro-China, but pro-South Korea. ''He's a very professional diplomat. He has a great deal of experience serving in the United States,'' Hill said.

At issue among Security Council members is whether to use colored ballots to distinguish votes between veto-bearing members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- and the other 10 elected nations, who serve for two years.

Council members agreed that today's straw poll would be without colored ballots but another informal poll on Monday would distinguish between the permanent veto-holding members and the other 10, said a spokesman for Greece's Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, this month's council president late yesterday.

The decision was a compromise after Britain had argued for a straw poll without veto rights, because two candidates -- Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the only woman in the race, and former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani -- had entered late and should have the chance for a straw poll.

Britain, diplomats said, is known to want to keep the race open for any other candidate who might want to run whereas colored ballots, in practice, could end the contest.

But Bolton said he believed ''plenty of time has elapsed for us to go to the differentiated ballot.: Behind Ban in the previous poll was Shashi Tharoor of India, a novelist and the UN undersecretary-general for public information, followed by Surakiart Sathirathai, Thailand's deputy prime minister; Jordan's UN Ambassador Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein; and Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka, a former UN undersecretary-general for disarmament.

Tharoor said today's vote could consolidate Ban's lead.

''I was second in both the two straw polls because I do believe that many ambassadors and many governments are looking for a real choice,'' Tharoor told Reuters. ''But I acknowledge, as a realist that if Mr Ban ban consolidates his lead today, it could be all over.'' The Security Council selects the new secretary-general, who then has to be confirmed by the 192-member General Assembly.

UN tradition deems that the next U.N. leader come from Asia.

The job as the world's top diplomat has changed over the years, but Bolton said the first priority was to be the chief administrative officer of the United Nations and institute management reforms.

Even Ban has some qualms about that. He told the Asia Society on Monday that many of the administrative operations would be left to a deputy.

REUTERS SAM HS1033