UNITED NATIONS: Ban Ki-moon, the eighth secretary general of the United Nations, is a workaholic who cast aside quiet diplomacy to take a tough line with the Arab world dictators fending off protests.
Ban, who had his own clash with riot squads as a student in his native South Korea, has crossed swords in recent months with Moammar Qaddafi of Libya, Bashar Al-Assad of Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen.
"Why do you keep calling me?" he recently quoted Assad as saying during one stormy telephone conversation when Ban urged him to carry out reforms.
The Arab Spring has galvanized the UN leader who announced Monday that he is seeking a second five-year term.
Until this year he had faced criticism from some UN envoys over a lack of charisma. "His English does not help his image, but he has an eye for detail and a steely determination," said one UN Security Council ambassador.
The determination starts early in the morning. The UN spokesman, Martin Nesirky, gets up at 4:30 am each day to prepare a world news summary for Ban when he arrives in his office at 7:30 am.
The UN chief, who will turn 67 next week, is often still making calls at 8:00 pm and always takes a pile of files home with him, his staff say.
Taking over from Kofi Annan in 2007 was tough for Ban. Issues that he championed such as the battle against global warming got bogged down after the collapse of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.
Ban stresses the need for quiet diplomacy in difficult cases but rights groups say he is too quiet about major countries like China. They were particularly critical after he failed to raise the case of detained Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in a meeting with China’s President Hu Jintao in November.
His own experiences in protests against South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee during the 1960s influenced his tough line on Ivory Coast and supporting protesters in North Africa and the Middle East this year.
And this has won praise from the Western powers and rights groups.
"Many students went out on the streets calling for greater freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly," Ban said in a recent interview with AFP recalling his days as a student at Seoul National University in the early 1960s.
"Of course, at that time students were arrested and beaten on the street, they were suspended from school," he added. "Sometimes I was just thrown, my hands and feet were taken by the soldiers."
Ban had to complete military service before obtaining a degree in 1970 and launching his long diplomatic career, which included stints as a vice consul in India, deputy ambassador to the United States and ambassador to Austria.
Ban served as South Korea’s foreign minister from 2004 until 2007 when Asia got behind him as its candidate for UN secretary general.
China and Russia have not been happy about his interference in the Arab Spring uprisings, particularly supporting the international coalition in Libya. Russia was also unhappy about the UN’s handling of Kosovo’s independence in 2008.
But Ban has taken care not to overly annoy any of the five permanent Security Council members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – who could veto his reappointment.
Rights groups are still watching him though. Ban’s record in his first term was "disappointing," said Philippe Bolopion, UN director for Human Rights Watch.
"We give him credit for speaking out from time to time, as he has done for example when traveling to central Asia, on gay and lesbian issues, or most recently when forcefully addressing serious human rights violations in Ivory Coast. But in our view, to deserve a second term, he would have to be more outspoken and consistent when confronting the critical human rights issues of our time."
Ban married his high school sweetheart, Yoo Soon-taek. The couple have a son and two daughters.
