Secretary-General Ban, who has promised to tame the U.N. bureaucracy, yesterday looked instead like someone who is being tamed by the U.N. apparatus. In appointing a Briton close to Prime Minister Blair, John Holmes, to coordinate human affairs at the United Nations and a Mexican, Alicia Barcena, to head the U.N. management team, Mr. Ban seemed unable to break away from old traditions. It was not clear yesterday whether any American official would hold a senior position in the new Ban administration. Several insiders said the absence of a former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, hurt Washington's prospects of securing sought-after U.N. positions.
The U.N. peacekeeping department, whose leadership America was recently lobbying for, became entangled in a new scandal yesterday after a Daily Telegraph report on allegations of U.N. peacekeepers sexually abusing minors in southern Sudan.