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Race Is On for New Head of OPCW
Seeking to avoid the rifts that marked its 2002 election of a director-general, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) member states are aiming to choose a new head at a meeting next month.
The current chief, Rogelio Pfirter, is scheduled to step down in July 2010, when his second four-year term ends. OPCW directors-general are limited to two terms.
According to the OPCW media and public affairs office, the seven candidates are Benchaa Dani of
The OPCW’s Executive Council has set a goal of reaching a decision by its Oct. 13-16 meeting. Ambassador Jorge Lomónaco Tonda of
The director-general heads the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat, which implements the CWC. He is in charge of administering a €75 million ($105 million) annual budget and manages a staff of 500.
According to diplomatic sources, the process of reaching agreement on a new director-general is burdened by the lack of a precedent for a routine, harmonious change at the helm of the OPCW. The
Similarly, the recent vote on a new director-general for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) pitted nonaligned against Western countries, with the former generally backing South African candidate Abdul Minty and the latter largely supporting Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano. Amano was eventually elected in early July, barely receiving the necessary two-thirds majority in the IAEA’s Board of Governors.
Lomónaco said member states are aware of these precedents. He emphasized that, during the selection process, he and OPCW members are “working hard to avoid politicization as much as possible.” During the Executive Council’s February meeting, member states were asked to put forward candidates in a national capacity rather than nominating candidates through regional groupings. Lomónaco acknowledged that the CWC foresees a role for regional groupings in the selection of many OPCW posts and that the convention emphasizes the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible. “But under the convention, this is not important for the selection of director-general,” Lomónaco said. “Some interpret this as the intention of the forefathers to avoid giving regional groupings a say in the selection of the director-general,” he said.
The candidates presented their vision of the priorities and challenges for the CWC, as well as their ideas on management of the Technical Secretariat, during the July 15 council regular meeting. The meeting was closed, but copies of the candidates’ presentations were made available to Arms Control Today.
The seven nominees, all of them career diplomats, emphasized the need to implement the CWC in a balanced manner, citing issues such as the timely destruction of remaining chemical weapons stocks, nonproliferation, and cooperation. All the candidates vowed to build bridges among states-parties, and many candidates pledged to continue to support the practice of zero nominal growth budgets for the OPCW.
Lomónaco said he would start informal consultations “to identify early trends” that show which candidates have the least support, in order to reduce the number of candidates, through voluntary withdrawals, before the October council meeting. According to diplomatic sources, Lomónaco’s goal might be difficult because nominating states could be reluctant to withdraw their candidate too quickly after they entered the race for director-general. Also, the sources said, there appear to have been no consultations among member states during the summer break.