Nine encourage votes sit on one pan

A diplomatic source said Rebeca Grynspan, Costa Rica's former vice-president on leave from UNCTAD, led the Security Council's third indicative straw poll on Friday with nine encourage votes, five discourage votes and one no opinion. She had also led the first secret poll of the 15-member Council.[1]

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana's former foreign minister, had pulled ahead in the second poll and now stands at eight encourage, six discourage and one no opinion. On one pan sit nine encouragements, the figure that would suffice for a Council decision if it were a formal vote; on the other pan sit five discouragements whose authors remain unnamed.[1]

The veto color has not been printed

One discourage vote from a veto-holding permanent member — Britain, China, France, Russia or the United States — would scupper a candidate. After an unspecified number of straw polls, those five ballots are to carry a different color so a potential veto can be seen without naming the capital that cast it. Until that coloring, the nine-vote lead remains a count, and the General Assembly step still waits on a cleared Council hurdle.[1]

A State Department official said on Thursday that candidates must return the United Nations to maintaining peace and security as its primary purpose. That sentence names a condition Washington wants on the table; it does not disclose how the United States marked Friday's ballot.[1]

The next poll is still an unconfirmed week

Daniel Forti of the International Crisis Group said another straw poll was thought possible at the end of high-level week starting Tuesday; that timing is unconfirmed. The coloring of permanent-member ballots, when it comes, is the observable that would show whether any of the five discouragements is already a veto. On 11 September this column read an 11-to-2 agenda vote that kept an Iran item on the table while leaving the sanctions committee without a chair; the same split between a visible majority and an unfilled binding seat is the one this straw poll still holds.[1], [2]