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Bulgarian diplomat wins UNESCO race

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-23 04:13

PARIS: A career diplomat from Bulgaria won a suspenseful and drawn-out race to lead the UN agency for culture and education on Tuesday, beating out an Egyptian candidate whose one-time threat to burn Israeli books had galvanized opposition.

Bulgaria's former foreign minister Irina Gueorguieva Bokova smiles after being designated the candidate for the post of Director-General of UNESCO at their headquarters in Paris September 22,2009. [Agencies]

In a fifth round of secret balloting Tuesday, Bulgaria's ambassador to France, Irina Bokova, defeated Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosny for the leadership of UNESCO. The vote was 31 to 27, the organization's media office said.

Bokova, 57, will become UNESCO's first woman director general and the first from the former Soviet bloc. She was her country's foreign minister for a brief period in 1996-1997, and also helped negotiate Bulgaria's entry into the European Union and NATO. Her four-year term will begin November 15.

The race was tight and closely watched, with a flurry of secretive diplomatic efforts between each round, allegations of fraud and an uproar over Hosny's candidacy. Critics raised Egypt's contentious record of cultural censorship and accused him of being anti-Israel.

Bokova and Hosny tied on Monday night - and if Tuesday's vote had also been a draw, officials were prepared to pick a name at random from a bag.

The winner immediately sought to restore unity after the divisive race, speaking of her "respect and friendship" for Hosny and praising his campaign ideas. For months, Hosny had been considered the favorite.

"I never believed in the idea of a clash of civilizations," Bokova said, adding that her leadership of UNESCO would be geared at mutual understanding and cultural dialogue.

"UNESCO is about tolerance," she said.

The outcry against Hosny focused on his threat in the Egyptian parliament last year to personally burn any Israeli book he found in Egypt's famed Library of Alexandria. Hosny, a painter who has been Egypt's culture minister for more than two decades, made the comment in an attempt to defend himself against charges by Egyptian lawmakers of being soft on Israel.

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He later apologized for the remark, saying it was spontaneous and a manifestation of his anger at Palestinian suffering. But critics kept up the pressure, accusing him of several anti-Semitic comments over the years.

Bokova gained ground at the last minute as other candidates dropped out, partly because of efforts to find a strong challenger to Hosny.

Bokova speaks fluent English, Russian, Spanish and French. Her father was a Communist Party official who was editor-in-chief of the party newspaper. She joined the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry's UN and disarmament department in 1976, and witnessed Bulgaria's transformation from an Eastern bloc nation to an EU member.

Her win must be validated at the UNESCO general conference planned for October 15, the organization's media office said. She is to replace current leader Koichiro Matsuura of Japan on November 15.