The "five year rule" propounded by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, under which high official should serve no more than five years in a particular post, is causing a game of musical chairs.
Senior adviser Nicholas Haysom, for example, is said by Inner City Press’ multiple sources to have been offered the Deputy envoy post at the UN Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA. He had previously been in contention but not chosen for the top envoy post for the UN in Lebanon.
Haysom is an able diplomat and humanist, having worked alongside no less than Nelson Mandela. He showed passion for the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Sri Lanka, rare among Team Ban. Some feel that Ban’s UN has wasted his talents and now provided too low an exit from New York. "But that’s Ban," as a longer time UN hand put it to Inner City Press.
The Lebanon post, the sources go on to say, is being offered to Angela Kane of Germany, who is said not to want the post. Germany is said to want to keep a USG post, and Kane wants to stay in New York, and one idea is to give her the Disarmament post that is being vacated (also by application of the five year rule.)
(c) UN Photo Haysom and Bob Orr – & when will the 5 year rule apply to him?
The idea is that if the US keeps the Department of Political Affairs, which used to belong to the UK, the UK may now get the Chief of Staff or Chef de Cabinet post which Vijay Nambiar is slated to give up, leading the UK to have to sacrifice Baroness Valerie Amos at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. And who will get that?
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