New York, 18 September 2006 – Two new candidates have entered the UN Secretary-General selection process since the 14 September straw poll in the Security Council. Vaike Vike-Freiberga, the President of Latvia, was nominated jointly by three countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – in a single letter to the President of the Security Council on 15 September. Ashraf Ghani, the former Finance Minister of Afghanistan and World Bank anthropologist, is expected to be nominated formally this afternoon in a meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

President Vike-Freiberga is the only nominee not from the UN’s Asian Group. Following her nomination, Vike-Freiberga said in a written statement, “We do not accept the principle of regional rotation as the principal and sole factor in the selection of a candidate.” She also cited General Assembly Resolution 51/241 calling for gender equity in the consideration of candidates. She is expected to face opposition from China and Russia, both of which have stated their preferences for a candidate from Asia, and both of which hold veto power in Security Council votes.

In the press conference announcing her nomination, Vike-Freiberga said that she had spoken with U.S. ambassador John Bolton during her current visit to New York. He told her that the U.S. remained open to a broad range of candidates and that he thought there was still time for new candidates to emerge. She emphasized, however, that no U.S. official had explicitly supported her candidacy.

Other highlights from the press conference with Vike-Freiberga:

• She has requested a meeting with Russia’s UN delegation while she is in New York. This would be her first contact with the Russian government since her nomination.
• She said that her campaign is both an effort to win, as well as a way to further democratize the selection process.
• She commented at length on her opposition to making bilateral promises in exchange for a Member State’s support. She said her campaign would include consultations with states during which she would listen and address their concerns, but that it would be “totally inappropriate” to make deals.

Prior to this year’s selection process, only one woman had been nominated for appointment as UN Secretary-General. In 1991, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland was added to the list of candidates to succeed Javier Pérez de Cuéllar; Boutros Boutros-Ghali was eventually selected as his successor.