The UN General Assembly approved South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon this evening as the next UN secretary-general, the last step in the process allowing him to assume the post on January 1st.
Mr Ban (62) is the first Asian leader since Burma's U Thant held the post from 1961 to 1971.
Asian nations had insisted it was their turn for the job to succeed Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, who has led the 192-member world body for the past decade.
Mr Ban was approved by acclamation for a five-year term as the world's top diplomat.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern welcomed the appointment and wished Mr Ban well in his new role.
"Mr Ban has had a distinguished career and has been widely respected as his country's foreign minister. He comes to the post as the centrality of the United Nations to the international order is once again in sharp focus," Mr Ahern said.
Mr Annan hailed his successor as "a future secretary-general who is exceptionally attuned to the sensitivities of countries and constituencies in every continent" and said he would be "a man with a truly global mind at the helm of the world's only universal organisation."
The 15-member UN Security Council recommended Mr Ban to the Assembly after he comfortably beat six rivals in informal council polls.
"I will work diligently to materialise our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable members of humanity and for the peaceful resolution of threats to international security and regional stability," Mr Ban told the Assembly after his confirmation.
"The true measure of success for the UN is not how much we promise, but how much we deliver for those who need us most," he said.
Among the tasks that face him are:
- reforming the United Nations structure
- meeting UN Millennium Development Goals
- expanding peace operations and dealing with threats posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction
- HIV/AIDS and other pandemics,
- environmental degradation
Born to a farming family in 1944 - toward the end of the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula - Mr Ban has moved inexorably up the ranks of the South Korean foreign ministry.
He joined it in 1970 straight after university, where he graduated at the top of his class in international relations. He has been South Korea's foreign minister since January 2004.
He inherits a bureaucracy of 9,000 staff, a €4 billion annual budget and more than 90,000 peacekeepers in 18 operations around the globe that cost another €4 billion.
Mr Ban's low-key appraoch will be a contrast to Mr Annan, who in his first five years won a Nobel Peace Prize and was sometimes dubbed a diplomatic rock star, before financial scandals took over headlines in the past few years.
Agencies