SECRETARY-GENERAL BOUTROS BOUTROS-GHALI MET RECENTLY IN HIS

38th-floor conference room at the U.N. Secretariat with TIME International editor Jose M. Ferrer III, senior writer James Walsh and correspondents Marguerite Michaels and William Dowell. Excerpts from their conversation:

TIME: How do you define the Secretary-General's job?

Boutros-Ghali: The Secretary-General is playing a triple role. One, he is supervising the administration, and it is very complicated because, as you know, the choices of high civil servants are based on the principle of geographical distribution. Also the problem of finance. I am honestly a kind of superbeggar. You are laughing, but it is humiliating. We are bankrupt.

The second is purely the execution and preparation of the work asked by the General Assembly and by the Security Council. And the third element I call quiet diplomacy, which very often is even more important than open diplomacy--using your moral image to obtain from member states certain solutions. If you are successful, you will disappear. In the case of a failure, you will be accused of being the cause of the failure.

TIME: When you took the job in 1992, did you have any idea of ways that you would do it differently from your predecessors?

Boutros-Ghali: No. I was trained for 14 years, being the Deputy Prime Minister of Foreign Affairs in Egypt. What is new is that while you are working for your own country you are ready psychologically to accept a lot of frustration and humiliation because it is your country. It is a love affair.

Here you are fighting for a strange organization. Here you don't know who will betray you and who will not betray you. You are surrounded by a group of 20 different nationalities. They represent apparatchiks and are ready, speaking figuratively, to kill you if it is necessary, or to put poison in your tea. It is a risky job.

TIME: If you could redefine the job, how do you think it should be structured?

Boutros-Ghali: It depends on what the member states want. My real problem is that we are beginning a new period, the post-cold war, without an awareness of this new period. So I cannot tell you what the role of the Secretary-General ought to be as long as the member states don't know what they want from the United Nations.

TIME: What do you think are the most critical changes that we should prepare ourselves for?

Boutros-Ghali: I will say, with great humility, I don't know. I know that we will have more and more global problems. The role of the globalization of financing. The problem of environment, the problem of drugs, the problem of the forests in Brazil will have an impact on the quality of life in the U.S. You have the boat people. You have 4 million North Africans in France. You may have more in the next few years.

TIME: You've mentioned that member states haven't accepted the globalization of politics. What do you mean?

Boutros-Ghali: The average man feels insecure on account of this globalization. So his reaction is to return to his roots. Thus fundamentalism. What you have in your American Congress now is a kind of fundamentalism: the United Nations is a foreign body; it's a kind of conspiracy--the foreigners are our enemy, etc. You find this in the Muslim world. You find this in the Hindu. And then the problem of you, the media.

TIME: What problems do we cause?

Boutros-Ghali: We say we have 16 members in the Security Council: the 15 members plus cnn. Long-term work doesn't interest you because the span of attention of the public is limited. Out of 20 peacekeeping operations, you are interested in one or two. Two years ago, it was Mogadishu. Now it is Sarajevo. Tomorrow it will be Haiti. And because of the limelight on one or two, I am not able to obtain the soldiers or the money or the attention for the 17 other operations. Nobody was taking care of what was going on in Rwanda. It was one of my personal greatest failures.

TIME: Let me ask you a question that some people have raised about the Secretary-General. One of your roles is as a mediator between different countries. Another role is as commander in chief of peacekeeping forces, and there seems to be a contradiction between the two.

Boutros-Ghali: No, it is very clear. Commanders of the military forces are doing an operation of peacekeeping. In other words, they are there with the agreement of the protagonists of the dispute. If there is no agreement among the protagonists, we cannot succeed. The comparison is: you are a doctor. If the patient doesn't follow your advice, you cannot be successful. If there is no political will, we can do nothing.

TIME: Isn't this something that may have to be redefined? Repeatedly there are situations in which people are in immense danger and U.N. forces stand aside.

Boutros-Ghali: They don't stand aside. They are called back by the member states. What can I do? I have no power over the member states.

TIME: If the United Nations really is still as vital as you've tried to paint it, who should take the initiative to try to sort this out? Should the Secretary-General call a conference to try to amend the charter?

Boutros-Ghali: I proposed an international conference two years ago. The member states will just give you a quiet message: "Don't do it because it will not be a success.''

TIME: Is this going to be the fate of all the reform plans circulating now?

Boutros-Ghali: Certain of them will not be accepted by the member states. I can do nothing about that.

TIME: We do pay attention to 70% of the U.N.'s operations that are in the field of economic and social development, but we find them inefficient. This problem of regional hiring instead of hiring the best qualified...

Boutros-Ghali: I know this is very much exaggerated. Believe me.

TIME: You talk about the price of multilateralism, of dealing with 185 member states, but this can be a pretty high price, even in management.

Boutros-Ghali: No, no. I can assure you that you have first-class technicians who are working very hard here. And you have also dead wood. But you have the same dead wood in all the administrations all over the world.

TIME: So the bureaucracy here is no worse than the bureaucracy in Egypt?

Boutros-Ghali: It is different. It is not like an old state with 400 years of tradition. This is a young organization.

TIME: To many people it feels like a terribly old organization, with all kinds of reasons why things can't be done.

Boutros-Ghali: It has changed. That we have been able to go from a budget of $600 million for the peacekeeping operation to a budget of more than $3 billion and from 7,000 peacekeeping soldiers to about 70,000 is proof of its success.

TIME: How do you feel about criticisms from the U.S. Congress?

Boutros-Ghali: Maybe I am an optimist. I believe the United Nations is popular with American public opinion.

TIME: Have you found the U.S. difficult to deal with?

Boutros-Ghali: Yes. Any superpower is very difficult to deal with.

TIME: In, say, 25 years, what kind of U.N. do you hope to see? Clearly things can't go on as they have been.

Boutros-Ghali: I disagree with you. The United Nations has been a success in Cambodia. We have put an end to a war in Mozambique. We have put an end to a civil war in El Salvador. We have been able to obtain the codification of the law of the sea; we have been able to extend the life of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. People have become more aware of the problem of environment. The United Nations has done a lot.

TIME: What would you consider to be the most disposable operations of the U.N.?

Boutros-Ghali: It's the first time I've been asked this question. I agree we have to diminish our activity in certain fields and avoid duplication. But we have a very difficult problem. Let me illustrate. I went many years ago to Santo Domingo as the First Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt. I discovered a Center for the Education of Women that I was told was doing nothing. A few years later, I was elected Secretary-General, and I said, O.K., let us move this center from Santo Domingo to New York and amalgamate it. Santo Domingo said, "You are insulting us." I began in 1992. We are in 1995. I was not able to do it.

TIME: What do you think would happen if the U.N. suddenly vanished?

Boutros-Ghali: We would have to invent something new, which would replace the U.N. under another name.

TIME: Why?

Boutros-Ghali: Because the planes landing at Kennedy Airport are landing according to international convention, which was signed by the United Nations system. Because the shots you take against yellow fever if you are going to Africa are done according to the international system. We will be compelled to use an international system. There is no other way.