UN Security Council backs Portugal's António Guterres to be next secretary-general

UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council reached a surprisingly swift consensus Wednesday on its choice for the next U.N. secretary-general: António Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal.

Guterres, 67, who ran the U.N. refugee agency for 10 years, had been the clear front-runner for the last several months. That a deeply divided Security Council rallied around him was a clear signal that Russia and the West saw him as someone they could work with.

Thirteen candidates, including a record seven women, had vied for the job; two had dropped out.

"We have a clear favorite, and his name is António Guterres," said Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the U.N. who is presiding over the Security Council this month.

Churkin made the announcement outside the council's chamber Wednesday, flanked by his U.S. counterpart, Samantha Power, in an unusual display of cooperation. The envoys of all the other council members were also there, looking as if they, too, were surprised by their unity.

"In the end, there was a candidate whose experience, vision and versatility across a range of areas proved compelling, and it was remarkably uncontentious, uncontroversial," Power said. "And I think it speaks to the fact that each of us represents our nation and each of us know how fundamentally important this position is in terms of the welfare of our own citizens.

"Every day we go into Security Council, we aspire for the kind of unity we saw today," she added. "And on a crisis with carnage as horrific as that in Syria, the urgency of achieving that unity is no secret to anyone. And it's not something we've achieved up to this point."

Guterres will face a formal Security Council vote Thursday morning and will then have his name submitted to the 193-member General Assembly for approval, which will most likely happen next week.

If elected, he will succeed the current secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, whose second five-year term expires at the end of this year. The United Nations is faltering in carrying out its chief mandate, to stop the scourge of war, and is confronting an ever-widening rift between Russia and the West.

Guterres was in Portugal when the announcement was made. The Portuguese mission to the U.N. said it would comment publicly only after Thursday's formal vote.

The choice of Guterres dashed the hopes of many diplomats and civil-society activists that the U.N. would be led by a woman for the first time in its 71-year history.

One of the women contending for the job, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, said on Twitter that the results were bittersweet.

Guterres has promised gender parity in senior posts within the organization, but beyond that, what he will do to advance the rights of women through the work of the U.N. remains to be seen.

Antonia Kirkland, program manager for Equality Now, an advocacy group, said that while it was "disappointing" that a man would run the world body again, "we are at least hopeful that he will continue the feminist agenda, including first of all, ensuring gender parity among his staff at the Secretariat, and also prioritizing violence and discrimination against women as a pivotal issue."

Trained as a theoretical physicist, Guterres is a veteran politician and a member of his country's socialist party. His first major diplomatic test will be to rally Russia and whoever wins the presidency in the United States to address the carnage in Syria.

He will also face a range of thorny conflicts elsewhere, from South Sudan to Yemen, and nuclear brinkmanship in North Korea. He will have to repair the U.N.'s reputation for peacekeeping, sullied by repeated accusations of sexual abuse, and show that the secretary-general's office can stand up to political pressure from rich and powerful countries. Ban has spoken plainly of the pressures he has faced, most recently from Saudi Arabia over human rights violations in the conflict in Yemen.

Michael W. Doyle, a former U.N. official who is now a Columbia University professor, said that as the high commissioner for refugees, Guterres had demonstrated both charisma and an ability to maneuver.

"In the agency, he was known as someone who could sit down and hammer out agreements under difficult circumstances," he said. "Moscow has to understand that."

Guterres' first order of business will be to fill plum posts within the organization, and there he is likely to face bare-knuckles lobbying by the world powers. Russia had insisted that it was an Eastern European's turn to be secretary-general, so it remains to be seen how much it will push for its favored diplomats for key positions, including deputy secretary-general and head of the U.N. political affairs division.

The way the Security Council selects the world's top civil servant has long been opaque, though frustration on the part of many countries and a campaign by civil-society groups have allowed a bit of sunlight into the process. This year, for the first time, candidates faced hearings with council members. Most of them took part in public debates and took questions from the news media.

The British ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said that in those hearings, Guterres had prevailed. He said his government favored a "strong" secretary-general "who will provide a convening power and a moral authority at a time when the world is divided on issues, above all like Syria."

The Security Council had taken five informal polls over the last few months, but there was no way to distinguish how the five veto-wielding permanent members had voted. On Wednesday, for the first time, the permanent five — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — voted on red ballots, and the others on white ballots. This was designed to show which candidates might face a veto. When the counting was finished, it was clear that Guterres would not.