MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Next year, a selection process will be held to determine who will succeed Ban Ki-moon to the top position within the international body, whose term concludes on December 31, 2016.
“We [stand for] … the equitable regional rotation in the process of the election of the UN secretary-general, by entrusting for the first time the highest position of the UN secretariat to the national coming from an Eastern European country,” Strelet said in his UN General Assembly address.
His words echo those of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement on September 25 that the next UN head should be drawn from the Eastern European UN regional group.
All UN member states are divided into five major regional groups — African, Asia-Pacific, Eastern European, Latin American and Caribbean and Western European and Others. Throughout the UN's history, none of its eight secretary-generals have come from the Eastern European group.
