S-G in waiting
Interviewed on Sunday television two weeks ago, a coy foreign minister Gareth Evans acknowledged that, yes, he might be interested, if asked, in becoming secretary-general of the United Nations. Thus was made public one of the worst-kept secrets in Canberra: Evans' desire to strut the world stage as the top official of the UN.
Evans evidently believes that his record in diplomacy is such as to impress the international powers that be, and he may well be right.
Previous UN-secretary generals, let us recall, have included the late Kurt Waldheim. Already as a young man, Waldheim, an Austrian, demonstrated his understanding of international relations by following (and relaying) orders as an officer of the German Army in Yugoslavia during World War II.
Waldheim had the bad luck to be on the losing side, but his experiences in helping a powerful neighbour oppress a weaker one undoubtedly helped to prepare him for later greatness.
Gareth Evans can boast similar achievements. Is there anyone, for example, other than President Suharto himself, who has done more in the international arena to defend and assist a powerful Indonesia in occupying the territory of a very small East Timor? Indeed, it could be argued that he has been far more successful than Waldheim in Yugoslavia, for Evans has obtained for Australia a share of the plunder of East Timor's oil wealth.
Many people would have thought it impossible to offer more convincing proof than that of his willingness to aid the powerful in oppressing the weak, but Gareth Evans equalled or even outdid his record on East Timor when it came to Cambodia.
The United States and China didn't even need to whistle: Evans had sniffed out their wish for a diplomatic way of getting rid of the Cambodian government, and he leapt into the breach demanding a "comprehensive political settlement". In practice, this meant the United Nations dismantling the Cambodian government in "exchange" for the Khmer Rouge doubling or quadrupling the area under its control and not killing very many UN troops or observers.
This scheme, it has to be admitted, was not devised by Evans, although he often gave the impression that it was, and he is still writing letters to the newspapers describing it as a "success". The real inventor, a particularly belligerent US Congressman with a sense of irony, even proposed that Evans be given the Nobel Peace Prize for his role; unfortunately for Evans, Pol Pot is not a voting member of the Nobel Committee.
So Evans has more than demonstrated the lack of scruples essential to a top official of the New World Order. Australia's secretary-general in waiting should be marketed to the UN, perhaps, as the Waldheim of the southern hemisphere.