U.N. CHOICE HAS RIGHT STUFF FOR WASHINGTON.

Byline: Randall Hackley Associated Press 

Kofi Annan, the West African picked Friday to become U.N. secretary-general, is a longtime bureaucrat well-versed in the intricate workings of the United Nations. In short: just what Washington wanted.

Born in the English-speaking nation of Ghana, Annan has spent 30 years at U.N. posts in Egypt, Ethiopia and Switzerland as well as at headquarters in New York.

Annan, the 58-year-old chief of U.N. peacekeeping, has ``a style of quiet elegance,'' said U.S. magistrate Jack Mason, a former classmate at Macalester College in Minnesota.

``He powerfully delivered points in the most understated way,'' Mason told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from St. Paul.

``He sort of combined the qualities of, on the exterior, having a very nice self-deprecating sense of humor yet there (being) an inner strength that just radiates,'' he said.

A fashionable dresser who favors charcoal business suits that accent his salt-and-pepper gray hair and goatee, Annan was the U.S. choice to succeed Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian whose bid for a second term was opposed by Washington, which called him too slow in promoting U.N. reform.

In an interview Friday with the Associated Press, Annan said his main goal would be to work closely with the 185 U.N. member-states to decide ``what sort of U.N. we want in the 21st century and in a climate where financial resources are diminishing.''

Washington had said it wanted a secretary-general with enough administrative skills to push through a streamlining of U.N. operations.

Annan first captured U.S. attention when he helped negotiate the release of Western hostages held by Iraq during the Gulf War and resolve the plight of 500,000 Asians stranded in Kuwait and Iraq.

He also served as special envoy for Boutros-Ghali to the former Yugoslavia and to NATO after peace accords last year ended the 3-1/2-year Bosnian war.

As U.N. undersecretary for peacekeeping operations, he administered a budget of $3.8 billion.

From his 37th-floor office overlooking New York's East River, Annan oversaw 18 operations ranging from factional fighting in Somalia to the refugee crisis in Rwanda and a multinational force in Bosnia.

In a 1994 speech at his alma mater, Macalester, Annan recalled his first American experience: ``My arrival in St. Paul marked my first trip outside Africa, my first experience of the changing seasons, my first encounter with winter.

``To a child of the tropics, bundling up in the endless layers of winter wear was a nuisance. . . . One odd item seemed both strange and inelegant: ear muffs. I was determined not to wear them. Only when I returned from a brisk winter walk with my ears nearly frozen did I have to conclude that the natives probably know what they were doing.

``This was an early lesson that Macalester taught me: Never walk into an environment and assume that you understand it better than the people who live there. That lesson has been useful ever since.''

Annan, who speaks French as well as several African languages, began his public service career as an administrative and budget officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva in 1962.

His career includes jobs as assistant secretary-general in the U.N. office of human resources and as a finance director, deputy chief of administration, and head of personnel for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Annan received a bachelor's degree in economics from Macalester in 1961. He also has a master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a postgraduate certificate in economics from the Institute for Advanced International Studies in Geneva.

Annan and his second wife, the Swedish-born Nane Cronstedt, live in New York City. Her mother is the sister of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis in Hungary near the end of World War II.

``It's a nice completion of the circle,'' Mason said. ``The Swede who saved so many Jews during World War II, his niece is now married to the secretary-general of the U.N.''

In 1994, Annan told a reporter he turns to nature when his work gets to him: ``I enjoy taking a walk in the woods. I need to find the isolation, because I can no longer leave my work at work as I used to.

``When I pick up the paper or turn on the television, my work is often right there in front of me.''

That may be truer more now than ever.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) ANNAN

(2) U.S. Gen. George Joulwan, left, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, shows Kofi Annan, a map of U.N. peacekeeping plans in Zagreb, Croatia, in December 1995.

Associated Press