Your editorial (Comment, 10 April) refers to struggles over the directorship
of the WHO.
When nameless and faceless bureaucrats say that a particular director
of a UN agency is 鈥榙ifficult to work with鈥� or that he is 鈥榓utocratic鈥�, all
that this really amounts to is that these men could not manipulate him (or
her) as easily as they had hoped and thus give wide publicity to the particular
director鈥檚 鈥榮hortcomings鈥�.
When British and US (and, indeed, Singaporean) mandarins found they
could no longer manipulate the director of UNESCO, they stopped their contributions
to an organisation doing valuable work in many fields of science and education.
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You may be sure that keeping the directors in line rarely needs to take
so blatant a form 鈥� a mere hint at an earlier stage usually does the trick.
I become more convinced of Hiroshi Nakajima鈥檚 great merits the more I read
of the snide denigration of his character and of his ability to do a very
difficult job well.
Ernest Gower Versoix, Geneva
