Afghan academic joins race to succeed Annan

UNITED NATIONS: An Afghan academic and former finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, has entered the race to succeed Kofi Annan as UN secretary general, joining six other candidates, the UN press office said Thursday.

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta submitted the candidacy of Ghani, currently the chancellor of Kabul University, in a letter to the current president of the UN Security Council, Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis of Greece.

Ghani joined five other candidates from what the United Nations regards as the Asian region, amid a consensus here that it is now Asia's turn to assume the world body's top job in line with an unwritten rule of regional rotation.

The sixth candidate to take over from Annan, who steps down at the end of December after 10 years in office is President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon Under Secretary General for Public Affairs Shashi Tharoor of India, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, Jordan's UN Ambassador Prince Zeid al-Hussein and former UN disarmament chief Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka are the others in the fray.

Born in Kabul in 1949, Ghani was educated there, then at the American University in Beirut before obtaining a doctorate in international relations and anthropology from Columbia University in New York.

He later worked for 10 years at the World Bank and, after the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, took part as a special UN adviser in preparatory work for the 2001 Bonn accord that laid the groundwork for Afghanistan's post-war reconstruction. AFP