Council President: Security Council

council president: Russia U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current council president, expressed hope that the council will recommend Guterres by "acclamation" to the 193-member General Assembly, which must approve a successor to Ban Ki-moon, whose second five-year term ends Dec. 31, according to The Waterloo Record. Guterres topped all six informal polls in the council after receiving high marks from almost every diplomat for his performance in the first-ever question-and-answer sessions for candidates in the General Assembly. The Security Council is scheduled to meet behind closed doors Thursday morning for a formal vote on Guterres' candidacy. He was the only candidate of the 10 in the race to receive no "discourage" votes in Wednesday poll, which was the first to use colored ballots to distinguish the votes of the five veto-wielding permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. Guterres will almost certainly select a woman as deputy secretary-general and he said in the interview that one of the things that is "crucial" at the male-dominated United Nations is "to have gender parity." He said that his 10 years as the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, which ended in December, were "excellent preparation" for a secretary-general who needs to be an honest broker and be seen by countries as independent in order to promote consensus and overcome crises. "I think we are living in a world where we see a multiplication of new conflicts, and you see an enormous difficulty in solving the conflicts," Guterres said. "There is a clear lack of capacity in the international community to prevent and to solve conflicts." What needed, he said, is a new "diplomacy for peace" which requires discreet diplomatic contacts and shuttling among key players in conflicts and disputes. The result disappointed campaigners for a woman or East European to be the world top diplomat for the first time. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.