PRESIDENT Henri Konan Bedie hinted yesterday that Ivory Coast stood ready to offer its foreign minister, Mr Amara Essy, as a candidate for secretary-general of the United Nations if Egypt's Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali stood down.
The United States last week vetoed a second five-year term for Dr Boutros-Ghali (74), a former Egyptian deputy prime minister. But he refused to withdraw and no African state has yet put forward an alternative.
Mr Konan Bedie said after talks with President Jacques Chirac of France during a private visit to Paris that it was too early to present another candidate.
"For the moment, Ivory Coast has not registered its candidacy," the president said. But he added that Mr Essy would be "entirely up to the task," noting that he had been president of the UN General Assembly.
"There has been no Ivorian declaration of intention so far. I believe it is appropriate to wait for African heads of state in the Organisation of African Unity to do their work," Mr Konan Bedie said.
President Chirac pressed for Dr Boutros-Ghali to be reappointed and warned that France would veto any candidate who was not a fluent French-speaker.
African states, encouraged by France, have so far remained firm in supporting Dr Boutros-Ghali, despite impatience by the United States and some other Security Council members.
But in a letter revealed yesterday, Ethiopia broke ranks and urged Africa to abandon the embattled secretary-general and present alternative candidates for his job.
Under the UN system of rotation among the continents, the world's poorest continent would normally be entitled to a second term at the helm.
Other African candidates who have been canvassed include the Under-Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan of Ghana, who heads UN peacekeeping operations; Mr Hamid Algabid of Niger, the secretary-general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference; Mr Salim A. Salim of Tanzania, the secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity; and Mr Olara Otunnu, a former Ugandan UN envoy who heads the New York-based International Peace Academy.