AFRICAN DIPLOMAT'S ELOQUENCE IN BOSNIA SET HIM APART : PAST U.N. CHIEFS.

Byline: Barbara Crossette The New York Times

A year ago, Kofi Annan flew to the war-battered capital of Bosnia to preside as the United Nations handed over a foundering peacekeeping mission to NATO.

His eloquent litany of the West's failings there was a performance, many say, that helped establish him as the leading contender for the job he won Friday: secretary-general of the United Nations.

``The world cannot claim ignorance of what those who live here have endured,'' Annan, a Ghanaian who was then the representative of the secretary-general in Bosnia, said that day in Sarajevo.

``In looking back, we should all recall how we responded to the escalating horrors of the last four years. And, as we do, there are questions which each of us must ask: What did I do? Could I have done more? Did I let my prejudice, or my fear, overwhelm my reasoning? And, above all, how would I react next time?''

A diplomat known for candor and clear speaking, Annan is regarded as particularly suited for one job that defeated the departing Boutros Boutros-Ghali: selling the United Nations to skeptics, especially in the United States Congress.

Where Boutros-Ghali is an intellectual, private to the point of being reclusive, and sometimes prickly, Annan is considered accessible, affable and astute in the public politics of the job. Where Boutros-Ghali is admired, Annan is liked.

Friday evening, after the soft-spoken descendant of a family of paramount chieftains was named the next secretary-general - the first black African to hold the job - diplomats recalled how skillfully he negotiated his way among the four contentious outside powers in Bosnia: the United States, Britain, France and Russia.

``He is the only top official of the U.N. who came out of the Bosnia experience with dignity and without having harmed the organization or relations with any one of the great powers,'' an American official said. ``That's what a great diplomat's about.''

The United States vetoed Boutros-Ghali's pursuit of a second term, contending that without a new face the United Nations would never persuade a dubious Congress that it was on a serious course of reform. Of Annan, the American official said, ``He has the right skills and credentials to bring this organization into the 21st century.''

In choosing Annan, the Security Council has selected a consummate insider, a lifelong international civil servant.

Among his critics, especially the French, who would have preferred a candidate with political and ministerial experience (and from a French-speaking nation), there is concern that Annan may lack the stature or clout of his predecessor.

Boutros-Ghali, a former deputy prime minister and minister of state for foreign affairs in his native Egypt, came to the United Nations from a career in international diplomacy, much of it in the tough world of Middle Eastern and African peacemaking.

Annan's resume is more administrative: assistant secretary-general for program planning, budget and finance, head of human resources and security coordinator, director of the budget, chief of personnel for the high commissioner for refugees, administrative officer for the Economic Commission for Africa.

He was named under secretary-general for peacekeeping operations March 1, 1993, just in time to watch the debacle in Somalia the following fall and the genocide in Rwanda the next spring. He stood by in frustration as the major nations of the world, led by the United States, refused to intervene in Rwanda.

Kofi Atta Annan was born into a prominent family in Kumasi, Ghana - a British colony then called the Gold Coast - on April 8, 1938. His father was the elected governor of Ashanti Province and a hereditary paramount chief of the Fante people. The young Annan began his education at a local university of science and technology, then went on to Macalester College in St. Paul for a degree in economics.

Annan's first marriage, to a Nigerian, ended in divorce. In 1984, he married Nane Lagergren, a Swedish lawyer and judge whose mother was the sister of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who died, apparently in Russian hands, trying to save the lives of Jews in World War II. The couple, who have been living on Roosevelt Island but will soon move to the secretary-general's official residence on Sutton Place, have three children: a daughter, Ama, 27, and a son, Kojo, 23, from his first marriage, and a daughter, Nina, 26, from his wife's first marriage.

Previous U.N. secretaries-general and the year they took office:

- Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, 1992

- Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru, 1982

- Kurt Waldheim of Austria, 1972

- U Thant of Burma, 1961

- Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden, 1953

- Trygvie Lie of Norway, 1946.

CAPTION(S):

Box

Box: PAST U.N. CHIEFS (see text)