Friday, January 30, 2015

Excusive: For UN's Deputy Political Post, Russia's Titov & South Korea's Kim Won-soo Compete, Inner City Press Is Told


By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, January 30 -- A currently open top UN job is Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, under US Jeffrey Feltman. Inner City Press is exclusively informed that competing for the post are Kim Won-soo, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's long time senior advisor, and Russia's Dmitry Titov.

   Inner City Press, always greeting Mister Kim in the hall and on January 29 in the River Club reception thrown by Chile's UN Mission, is informed that Kim would like to follow Ban back to South Korea as a possible foreign minister, but wants to re-establish his profile for that.

  On the other hand, of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council, Russia may have the fewest UN posts. France owns UN Peacekeeping, the fourth in a row being Herve Ladsous who refuses all Press questions. Videos herehere (Jan 22) and here (Vine).

 China has DESA -- but, we hear, still has a candidate for ASG of DPA;  the US had DPA through Feltman. The UK may be losing Humanitarian Affairs - click here for Inner City Press' latest exclusive on that -- but then reaches out for the top envoy post in Iraq. But Russia?

  Another way to view it is, the UN Secretariat's one-sidedness on Ukarine, between US Feltman and Croatian Ivan Simonovic, left the UN on the sidelines on the Ukraine issue. Could Titov as the number two in DPA turn that around? It could. Watch this site.