For the United Nations' African bloc, the election last week of Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros Ghali as the new Secretary-General to succeed the retiring Javier Perez de Cuellar was a semisweet victory. The Africans had engineered their continent's first turn at the helm of the world organization -- and had outmaneuvered the big guns of the U.S. and Britain to achieve it. But Ghali was the "least African" candidate put forward by a bloc that dearly wanted to see the job go to a sub-Saharan black.
American and British officials privately disdained all the candidates as lacking stature and experience for...
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