U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has named U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Lynn Pascoe to head his political affairs department, a sensitive policy-making post long sought by major powers, his chief of staff announced Friday. Pascoe, a career diplomat, will succeed Ibrahim Gambari of Nigeria as undersecretary-general in charge of the political affairs department (DPA), a post that the United States, Britain, and other powers had actively sought. The appointment of Pascoe had been expected since last month but was delayed by weeks of internal debate over Ban's initial plan to put the U.S. diplomat in charge of an expanded DPA that would have taken over some functions currently handled by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). Those functions would have included disarming former combatants in post-conflict situations, procurement, and peace mission support. But the move faced resistance from developing countries which also oppose Ban's plan to restructure and streamline U.N. peacekeeping operations and tighten control over disarmament matters. Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, also announced the appointments of Japanese career diplomat Kiyotaka Akasaka to succeed India's Shashi Tharoor as head of the U.N. department of public information, and Sha Zukang, China's envoy to the United Nations in Geneva, as head of the department of economic and social affairs. Nambiar said France's Jean-Marie Guehenno would retain his post as head of peacekeeping operations (DPKO) as would Nicolas Michel of Switzerland, the U.N. undersecretary-general of legal affairs. Senior managers were being appointed for a tenure of no more than five years, he added. Last month, Ban chose Tanzanian Foreign Minister Asha-Rose Migiro as his deputy to replace Britain's Mark Malloch Brown, and chose Britain's ambassador to France, John Holmes, as his undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
