Senior UAE diplomat Lana Nusseibeh entered the race to become the next United Nations secretary-general on Wednesday, injecting a prominent Middle Eastern candidate into a contest that has struggled to produce a consensus choice among the Security Council’s most powerful members.
Nusseibeh, a former UAE ambassador to the UN for more than a decade, told Reuters she would seek to restore the world body’s role as a diplomatic problem-solver at a time of mounting global crises.
“It’s clear that today we need a secretary-general that can recommit to the future of multilateralism and the future of the United Nations as a problem-solver rather than as a spectator to the world’s crises,” she said shortly before going public with her candidacy.
Nusseibeh, the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, is a late entrant to the race. An informal Security Council poll had placed former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan as the narrow frontrunner, sources have said.
Although Grynspan has led the informal “straw polls,” last week she and all other candidates received two or more opposing votes from the ultimately decisive five permanent members of the council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.
Council members are negotiating over whether to hold another poll this Friday or at a later stage.
