THE Egyptian President, Mr Hosni Mubarak, had assured the United Nations Secretary-General, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, of his country's continued support, UN spokeswoman Ms Sylvana Foa said yesterday.
Ms Foa said Mr Mubarak had been "misquoted" at a Tunis news conference in which he appeared to end Egypt's support for Dr Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian, who is seeking a second five-year term in the face of a US veto.
Mr Mubarak had been quoted as saying in Tunis: "Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali will not be reelected. Our mission of support stops at this stage while there has been a veto against" his candidacy. Dr Boutros-Ghali's term expires on December 31st.
Speaking in New York, Ms Foa said Mr Mubarak and Dr Boutros-Ghali spoke by telephone following the media reports of the Tunisian news conference.
But the US campaign to deny a second term to Dr Ghali appears to have triumphed as the united African front in his support has cracked. Still, there is no guarantee that a new African head of the UN will meet the demands of the US for far-reaching reforms and so persuade Congress to pay thee 51.5 billion it owes the organisation.
A major sign of the breach in the African support for Dr Boutros-Ghali has come with a letter from the chairman of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), President Paul Biya of Cameroon, asking member states to put forward other names. Up to now the OAU had insisted that the former Egyptian diplomat was its only candidate, - but several African countries such as Ethiopia and Ghana were already calling for Dr Ghali to step aside.
Faced with the US determination to keep vetoing a new five-year term for Dr Ghali, the African states feared that the top post could go eventually to a non-African as part of a compromise deal. The 185-member UN General Assembly appoints the Secretary-General "upon the recommendation of the Security Council", but any of the so-called "Big Five" members of the council can veto any candidate.
On November 19th, the Security Council voted 14-1 in favour of a second term for Dr Boutros-Ghali but the US cast its veto and so blocked him. The US ambassador to the UN, Ms Madeleine Albright, who has led the campaign against Dr Boutros-Ghali, now says that with the OAU chairman's letter, "the logjam is broken".
This will be a relief to the US which has come under increasing criticism for its isolated stance in opposing Dr Ghali (74) - and for the way in which it has done so. Most UN members were angered to read in the New York Times last June that the Clinton administration would veto any attempt to give the Secretary-General a full second term.
This leak followed Dr Ghali's rejection of an offer of a face-saving one year extension made secretly by the US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher. Dr Ghali was himself a compromise candidate five years ago, pushed by France. He said then that he would only serve one term, but later changed his mind.
One of the reasons cited by the US for its opposition to Dr Ghali is that there is little chance of Congressional approval to pay the debt which is crippling the UN operations until a new Secretary-General is named.
Other US grievances against him were that he did not carry out necessary cost-cutting and bureaucratic reforms; when there was a slow response to famine in Somalia, he complained that the West was preoccupied with a "rich man's war" in Bosnia; and over US objections he released a report that implied that Israel intentionally shelled a UN compound filled with refugees in south Lebanon.