The United States sees two or three “really good candidates” to take over the U.N. Secretary-General post next year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday, but added that revealing Washington’s preferred choice would “doom them to lose.”
Speaking to reporters in Paris, where he was attending a G7 meeting of foreign ministers, Rubio explained that the United States doesn’t itself have a candidate, but sees “two or three very qualified people, and we’re going to let the voting continue on that front.”
Washington’s top diplomat stressed that the United States is most interested in whoever takes over the role on Jan. 1, 2027, being committed to reforming the United Nations.
“There’s real momentum behind U.N. reform. I think it’s one of the things that’s going to save the U.N., is that it reforms. If it doesn’t, it’s going to be in a lot of trouble. And we want someone as secretary-general that’s committed, truly committed, to reform,” Rubio said, adding that this would be the standard Washington is using to judge potential candidates.
The secretary said he hadn’t spoken to a single global leader who believed the U.N. was “perfect the way it is,” adding that he thinks everyone agrees the organization has a lot of waste and bloat and needs to “get back to its core principles.”
“I think it’s troubling for a lot of people that the U.N. really is not at the center of any of the global crises that are going on right now. It has not played a meaningful role in major global crises in quite a while,” Rubio said; however, he added that “real progress” had been made on reform over the past year.
“I think it’s important for the next secretary-general to be someone who’s committed to continuing to make those reforms, or the U.N.’s going to be in a lot of trouble,” he said.
Rubio’s comments come two weeks after the Trump administration said it has no position on whether former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban should become the next U.N. chief, after The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington is backing him.
“The United States has no position; we will continue to evaluate any and all candidates,” a senior U.S. official told The Epoch Times on Oct. 27.
“We are looking for a [secretary-general] that will implement the aggressive reform agenda that we have very publicly laid out in NYC. The UN has wastefully strayed too far from its core missions for too long.”
The comments follow an Oct. 25 Wall Street Journal op-ed citing anonymous sources in three countries saying that Trump administration officials have encouraged Orban to enter the race.
Current U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s second five-year term ends on Dec. 31., with the process to find his successor already underway.
Several informal closed-door “straw polls” in the U.N. Security Council, which are non-binding and anonymous, have taken place.
During these, members mark each candidate as “encourage,” “discourage,” or “no opinion.”
The straw poll results are not formally published but are regularly leaked to the media.
Securing the council’s recommendation will require a formal vote, expected once one candidate shows a strong chance of prevailing, with at least nine positive votes and no negative votes from the five permanent members—France, Britain, the United States, Russia, and China.
Following the council’s recommendation, the U.N. General Assembly will then hold a plenary session to appoint the recommended candidate by passing a resolution. The U.N. has never rejected a candidate put forward by the council in its more than 80-year history.
Nominations include International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi, former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan, and former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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