The Wall Street Journal said Sunday that the Trump administration appears to want former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to replace António Guterres as UN secretary-general when the latter’s term ends on December 31.
Sources from three countries told the newspaper that the United States had urged Orbán to join the race. The Trump administration has reportedly discussed his potential candidacy with Moscow and Beijing, which appear to support a plan under which Orbán would run as a joint candidate of the United States, Russia and China.
“As U.S. officials discussed who they would like to see at the U.N. summit, Mr. Orbán’s name kept coming up. ‘Someone like Orbán,’ they said, and their Chinese and Russian counterparts would agree. Ultimately, U.S. officials asked themselves the question: Why not Mr. Orbán?” » wrote the Journal’s conservative editorial board. “There are many reasons, such as the fact that he would be an apologist for Vladimir Putin and other dictators.”
The board was highly critical of Guterres as it subsequently assessed Orbán’s potential position as head of the UN.
“Perhaps the best thing to say about Orbán’s idea is that it would lift the veil on giving the UN such a low-level leader that Turtle Bay has already sunk,” he writes.
Read the full editorial on The Wall Street Journal:
Gn world
