July 24 (Bloomberg) -- South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon won the first informal poll on who should succeed Kofi Annan as the next United Nations secretary general, diplomats said. Ambassadors representing the UN Security Council's 15 member governments marked ballots in today's ``straw poll,'' indicating they encouraged or discouraged one of the four declared candidates, or had no opinion. The results of the closed-door vote weren't announced.Ban, 62, narrowly won the poll over UN Undersecretary General Shashi Tharoor, 50, of India, according to two Security Council ambassadors who spoke on condition of anonymity. Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, 47, and Jayantha Dhanapala, 67, Sri Lanka's former ambassador to the U.S. finished far back in the voting, the diplomats said.
``As the various candidates consider what the votes were, there may be decisions for additional candidates to enter the race or for one or more candidates to drop out,'' U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters. He refused to say whether the U.S. clearly favored one candidate.
The Security Council will hold a formal vote within the next three months to select the nominee whose name will go before the General Assembly, including all 192 UN members. The winner will take office on Jan. 1, the day after Annan's second five-year term expires. All the candidates are Asians because of a traditional geographic rotation for the post. The last Asian to lead the UN was Myanmar's U Thant, who completed two terms in 1971.
Ban has served as South Korea's ambassador to Austria and worked in his government's missions to the U.S., UN and India. He joined the diplomatic corps in 1970. He received a master's degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1985.
Ban said at an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier this year that the world body was ``overstretched and fatigued'' and that the next secretary general needs greater flexibility to respond to the need for improvements in UN management.
Straw polls have been held frequently throughout UN history, most recently in 1996 when Annan was elected to his first term. The poll showed that one permanent member of the Security Council, later identified as the U.S., would have vetoed then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
