15 January 2006

Countries exploring the chances of potential candidates for succeeding Secretary General Kofi Annan started preparing their long and short lists. Following are 16 names more commonly listed by active young delegates doing their professional homework. They are listed with no comment except that a name could be produced out of a political rabbit's hat at the last minute.

• Jayantha Dhanapala, 67, Adviser to the President of Sri Lanka, former Secretary General of the Secretariat for the Coordinating of the Peace Process; U.N. Under-Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs (1998-2003)
• Surakiart Sathirathai, 47, Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand
• Ban Ki-moon, 61, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea; Chef de Cabinet of the President of the 56th session of the U.N. General Assembly (2001-2002)
• Aleksander Kwasniewski, 51, outgoing President of Poland
• Jan Eliasson (Sweden), 65, President of 60th session of the U.N. General Assembly (2005-2006)
• Vaira Vike-Freiberga, 68, President of Latvia; U.N. Secretary General's Special Envoy for 2005 World Summit (2005)
• Goh Chok Tong, 64, Senior Minister, former Prime Minister of Singapore
• Tommy Koh, 68, Ambassador-At-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore; U.N. Special Envoy to the Russian Federation, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (1993)
• Kemal Dervis, Administrator, U.N. Development Programme, former Minister for Economic Affairs and the Treasury of Turkey
• Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Permanent Representative of Jordan to the U.N.
• Eduard Kukan, 66, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia, Chairman of the Third (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) Committee, 48th session of the U.N. General Assembly (1993-1994); U.N. Secretary General's Special Envoy for the Balkans (1999-2001)
• Danilo Turk, 53, Professor of International Law, University of Ljubljana; U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs (2000-2005)
• Tarja Halonen, 62, President of Finland; Co-Chair of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization (2002-2004)
• Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu, 37, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania
• Solomon Passy, 49, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, Chairman-in-office of OSCE (2004)
• Nirj Deva (UK), Member, European Parliament, Group of the European People's Party and European Democrats (EPP/ED Group)