Boutros Ghali

Boutros Boutros-Ghali was jeered in Sarajevo for opposing military action against the Serbian invasion. The United Nations secretary-general was stoned in Mogadishu by Somali supporters of a warlord for allegedly favoring a rival. He was threatened in Addis Ababa by Ethiopian demonstrators opposing his planned visit to secessionist Eritrea. And it was all meant to be a goodwill trip.Mr. Boutros-Ghali has angered the United States for publicly assigning it missions in Somalia it renounces.

AFTER A HALF-CENTURY, the United Nations will begin the new year with its seventh secretary-general. Kofi Annan of Ghana, 58, will be the most experience-qualified of the lot, having spent three decades as an international civil servant. And he will be the first black African.Now the under-secretary-general for peace-keeping, Mr. Annan enjoys a high reputation around the U.N. for competence and tact. That may not please the likes of Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the sort of critic to be assuaged if the U.S. is to pay its $1.4 billion arrears to rescue the U.N. from bankruptcy.

Intense fighting around VITEZ forced evacuation of about 60 U.N. peacekeepers from their base there. U.N. officials said they were evacuated after shells landed in the base area. It was not known who fired the shells.The vital SARAJEVO airlift resumed. About 20 planes brought badly needed food, medicine and other supplies. The airport has been shut down repeatedly in the past week because of shelling, mostly by Serb gunners.Relief workers of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said a relief convoy for MAGLAJ was stuck at a Bosnian Croat checkpoint just outside of the town, which has not seen an aid convoy since Oct. 25.U.

Now that Washington has got its man to head the United Nations, it's about time the United States paid its dues. n n n nKofi Annan will likely be a very good secretary-general. His qualifications had little to do with the outpouring of U.S. support for the new U.N. chief. He won Washington's enthusiastic embrace simply because he wasn't Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the beleaguered Egyptian whose second term was derailed by an electorally driven and internationally condemned U.S. veto.In fact, the soft-spoken and pragmatic Ghanaian is not likely to do any more drastic U.N. staff and budget cutting (what passed for "U.N.

In August 1992, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Poland's first non-communist prime minister after the Cold War, was appointed the U.N.'s special rapporteur on human rights violations in former Yugoslavia.Two weeks ago, after the fall of the ''safe havens'' of Srebrenica and Zepa, Mr. Mazowiecki resigned to protest U.N. ''hypocrisy'' in ''claiming to defend [Bosnia] but in fact abandoning it.''The Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Subcommission expressed support for Mr. Mazowiecki's ''moral and courageous stand and his resignation in protest of the perpetuation of gross violations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called for action yesterday to close the ever-widening gap between the world's rich and poor, but he acknowledged that donor countries are suffering from aid "fatigue" that could take years to overcome.Mr. Boutros-Ghali spoke at the opening of the United Nations' seven-day World Summit on Social Development, called to address problems arising from poverty and discrimination.James Gustave Speth, head of the U.N. Development Program, outlined some of the dimensions of the global poverty problem.

In a test of wills between NATO and the United Nations as to which organization has the power to authorize air strikes in Bosnia, the U.N. and its assertive secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, is the clear winner. By attaining the right to veto the first proposed offensive operation in NATO history, he has set a precedent that could serve his expansive vision of a secretary-general's authority.The Clinton administration must have swallowed hard in accepting this arrangement. For months, it has insisted that NATO on its own could initiate air strikes to protect U.N. peacekeeping forces and insure the delivery of humanitarian supplies to Muslim victims of Serb aggression.