World nations to hear candidates make pitch to lead UN

For the first time in the United Nations' 70-year history, candidates vying to become secretary-general will make their pitch for the job to world governments in hearings beginning next week.

The four men and four women campaigning to become the world's top diplomat will each go before the General Assembly for two hours to lay out their vision and answer questions from member-states and civil society.

The unprecedented hearings are part of a broader push for more transparency in the selection of who will succeed Ban Ki-moon on Jan. 1, 2017.

"We have decided collectively to open up the race," French Ambassador Francois Delattre said of the new selection process.

The hearings "are important and new, and I do plan to attend to listen to each of the candidates," he told AFP.

For decades, the selection of the U.N. chief has been the purview of the five permanent Security Council members -- Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States -- in a process kept mostly behind closed doors.

But the General Assembly in September voted to lift some of the secrecy surrounding the process, asking candidates to send a formal letter of application, present their resumes and appear at hearings.

Among the declared candidates are UNESCO chief Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, former New Zealand Prime Minister and head of the UN Development Program Helen Clark, and former high commissioner for refugees Antonio Guterres of Portugal.

With little time left before the Security Council begins a series of straw polls to pick a nominee, diplomats say the race remains wide open.

The selection process will begin in July and several rounds of polling will take place until September, when the 15-member council will submit...