No definite winner so far in contest to replace Annan
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon may have consolidated his lead in a third Security Council straw poll held on Thursday, but he still cannot, at least for now, declare himself the ultimate winner in the race to succeed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
As in the two previous informal polls, the 15 council members chose among the options of "encouraging", "discouraging" and "no opinion" printed on each ballot sheet.
COMFORTABLE LEAD
The South Korean front-runner, 62, received 13 encouraging votes, one discouraging and one no opinion in the latest informal preliminary poll, compared with eight encouraging votes, three discouraging and four no opinions for India's Shashi Tharoor, the UN Undersecretary-General for Public Information, who came second.
Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who had only entered the race less than two weeks ago, scored a surprise victory by advancing to third place which otherwise would have been occupied by Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai.
As the only non-Asian candidate, Vike-Freiberga is set to face an uphill battle in the race to be the UN's leader since it has been generally accepted by UN member states that the next UN chief should come from Asia.
Analysts say that the Thai candidate, who slipped to fourth place may have been affected by last week's military coup, during which Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted.
Ban had already won the previous two rounds with a clear advantage. In the second poll held on Sept. 14, Ban received 14 out of 15 positive votes, with only one in the negative domain.
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