Word: thant
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...been on the job longer than anybody else, and he sounds tired and discouraged. Last week, eleven months before his second five-year term is to expire, United Nations Secretary-General U Thant announced: "I have no intentions whatsoever of serving beyond the present term." There was little doubt that Thant, who turned 62 last week, meant what he said. The question was, who could succeed...
...Candidates. The problem is not that Thant is so peerless an administrator, statesman or anything else-far from it. It is rather that there are few candidates who are not objectionable for one reason or another. Thant gallantly said that "regional considerations" should play no part in the choice of his successor, but they will. So will racial, religious, ideological and even emotional considerations. No one representing either of the superpowers or their closest allies has a chance. Yet a candidate must pass muster with both Washington and Moscow-the "Directorate," as Brazil's Ambassador João Augusto...
...that a new chief U.N. executive should come from a country that is neutral, small and underdeveloped-which rules out Japan, among others. Since the first two men to hold the job, Norway's Trygve Lie and Sweden's Dag Hammarskjöld, were white Europeans and Thant is from Burma, many African and Latin delegates believe that it is their turn. But neither Moscow nor Washington wholly trusts the Black Africans (too unpredictable on any issue but race and colonialization), and the Russians feel that everything south of the Rio Grande except Cuba and Chile...
...certain soft-spoken Asian who comes from a small, neutral, underdeveloped country that recognizes Peking, who has kept on reasonably good terms with both superpowers, and who reflects what one diplomat calls "a comfortable level of mediocrity." As a result, some believe that for the second straight time U Thant may find it impossible to resist a draft. . . . Thant's sense of futility about his job is not difficult to understand. Last week Egypt made headlines by revealing that it will not at present demand a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the Middle East. Israel...
...been a marked increase in such activities in recent years. Before 1960 India and Pakistan were the only two "high-fertility" countries with official government policies aimed at reducing population growth. Today, 30 developing nations have state-supported programs. Villot points out that in 1967 Secretary-General U Thant established the Fund for Population Activities to provide financial and technical assistance. Worse, he writes, the U.N.'s children's fund (UNICEF) is now committed to distribute contraceptives: "It therefore puts itself in contradiction to the very objectives of the institution created for the well-being of children...