No clear front-runner for post of new UN secretary general yet — Russian MFA

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. The new UN secretary general will have to tackle difficult and large-scale challenges, so there is no clear front-runner for the post yet, Russian Foreign Ministry official Kirill Logvinov told TASS.

"There is no clear front-runner. And the problem lies not so much with the candidates themselves as with the scale and nature of the tasks that the new secretary general will have to address urgently," he said.

Logvinov noted that the new head of the world organization will have to restore trust in it, begin practical work to correct the current staffing imbalance in the secretariat, and from the first days of his tenure focus exclusively on binding or consensus-based decisions. "Not everyone will be able to do all this, even if they have broad expertise and extensive experience," the department director added.

"As far as I can judge, this is precisely the circumstance that guided many of those who decided not to put forward their candidacies," Logvinov said.