|
Photo by Jane Scherr |
Kofi Annan Interview: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley
|
Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 1 of 4
Mr. Secretary-General, welcome to Berkeley.
I'm happy to be here.
Reform and peacemaking are two complex projects in your portfolio. Both depend on the kind of person you are. Let's begin there. Prior to starting work at the UN thirty years ago, what factors were most influential, do you think, in shaping your character?
First there's family. My parents, father and mother. And then I also grew up in Ghana at the time when we were fighting for independence, and so I saw lots of changes in my youth. I saw that it was possible to challenge and it was possible to question the status quo and do something about it. And change did occur. So I grew up with a sense that in one country, change can have an impact. And then of course my travels around the world, first a year in Europe and then other parts of the world.
Any books in particular influence your thinking?
Well, when it comes to a question of books, obviously one of the
things that you look at -- for example, at my college (Macalester College in
St. Paul, Minnesota), 
one of the things that I found very interesting myself
was The Prince by Machiavelli. I was interested in that because if one
wants to understand power and the use of power, and coming from a continent
where power is often abused, it's essential to try and understand how people
obtain power and how they abuse it, or use it effectively.
The other important thing about your background is that you come out of the UN system. For thirty years your career has been in the UN. A colleague characterized you as "bold, candid, and informal." How does someone who comes up through the UN system emerge with those characteristics still in place?
I suppose over the period I avoided becoming your typical bureaucrat, or what my predecessor used to call an apparatchik. In the sense that, given what I've told you about the factors that influenced me as I was growing up, I always approached problems with, "What is the problem? Let's try to set it up properly. How can we solve it? And I'm going to do whatever I can." Of course, with a team, with colleagues, to get it done. I never approach a problem as, "This is going to be risky. How am I going to cover myself? Should I put a note on the file so that they know it wasn't me, or I tried?" Because you can put notes on the file but it doesn't solve the problems. So I really spent an amount of time in a bureaucracy but I managed to retain a sort of, if you wish, an entrepreneurial spirit as to how we tackle issues and get things done.
Next page: The Changing Role of Secretary-General
© Copyright 1998, Regents of the University of California