Campaigning on the QT : United Nations: Discretion is the name of the game as candidates--and their backers--jockey for position.

No candidates figure to strain their voices or flatten their feet stumping the constituency. No handlers are waiting in the wings with mudslinging TV commercials. All is calm and quiet, without the patter of insults or flashes of emotion. Yet the electoral campaign for United Nations secretary general is already well under way.

The campaign is so hushed, so low-key that some associates of former Nigerian military ruler Olusegun Obasanjo objected recently when an editor’s note under his Opinion article in The Times described him as “a leading candidate” for the U.N. job.

He surely is that, but the editor’s note struck his associates as unseemly because it made him look like a campaigner. Jockeying for the job is not supposed to be so blatant. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, after all, did not campaign but remained with his books in a beach house in Peru before being elected in 1981.

Perez de Cuellar has announced that he plans to retire as secretary general Dec. 31, not quite a month short of his 72nd birthday. The impending retirement has set off rounds of gossip, a whirlwind of names, intense planning--and a flurry of indirect, subtle, sotto voce campaigning.

“This subject is No. 1 on the hit parade,” says Yves Fortier, Canadian ambassador to the U.N. “There isn’t a dinner or reception that I go to that this question does not come up.”

Some U.N. insiders believe the time has come to select someone already renowned worldwide to be chief administrative officer of the world body.

“What is needed is a dramatic choice,” says one senior U.N. official. “You need drama. You have to find a major figure, someone who has charisma, a good communicator who can appear on television. An old-fashioned diplomat is not what we need anymore.”

Those who agree with this analysis have suggested such names as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. But this idea is not prevalent.

“There is no need for a superstar,” Ghanaian Ambassador Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor says. “The drama is within the U.N. already because of the collapse of the Cold War. A superstar may only muddy water. You don’t need a prima donna. The opera is already written.”

But Awoonor is hardly unbiased: He and his government have proposed Kenneth Dadzie, the Ghanaian bureaucrat who heads the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva.

Although Dadzie has not evoked much enthusiasm so far, most insiders believe that he has a better chance than Thatcher or Shevardnadze. These analysts look on the boosting of renowned or charismatic leaders as fanciful dreaming; they believe an old-fashioned diplomat or bureaucrat will surely be chosen again.

Although only Dadzie has been formally nominated, many others are being discussed.

Among them are Obasanjo, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who, if chosen, would be the first woman secretary general; Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, an Iranian citizen who is coordinator of relief for refugees in Iraq; Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas; Salim A. Salim of Tanzania, secretary general of the Organization of African Unity; Finance Minister Bernard Chidzero of Zimbabwe; President Abdou Dioff of Senegal; Tommy Koh, former Singaporean ambassador to the U.N.; U.N. Under Secretary General Martti Ahtissari of Finland, who led the U.N. operation in Namibia; Maurice Strong of Canada, who will be secretary general of a U.N. environmental conference in Brazil in 1992, and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez.

But “none of these names sing,” says a senior U.N. official. “You don’t go over the list and say, ‘Stop, that’s it.’ ”

As a result, there has been gossip that the Security Council might ask Perez de Cuellar to stay for two more years while it searches further. But he has been in ill health and is unlikely to stay. Moreover, the United States and Britain are annoyed with him because of his refusal to move U.N. police into Kurdish relief camps in northern Iraq without a Security Council resolution.

So far, the only movement in the electoral campaign has been Dadzie’s Ghanaian endorsement. But even Ghana’s envoy does not intend to take Dadzie around to meet U.N. ambassadors until July.

“When he is here in July, we will stomp around a bit,” Awoonor says. “It’s a little early yet. . . .”

In a recent Ford Foundation report, two former senior officials, Brian Urquhart and Erskine Childers, proposed that the U.N. set up a formal search committee to seek out the most qualified candidates. Because of political circumstances or the untimely death of the officeholder, past secretaries general usually have been chosen in a panicky, haphazard rush.

“When Kurt Waldheim was elected,” Urquhart says, “no one even looked in the War Crimes Index under W.”

Waldheim, now president of Austria, served as secretary general from 1972 to 1981. Evidence has since come to light that he was an officer with a German army unit during World War II that arranged mass deportations of Greek Jews to death camps. After the war, the Yugoslav war crimes commission listed Waldheim as a war criminal. But this was not widely known at the time of his U.N. election.

The system of electing the secretary general, a job that pays $183,000 a year, is complicated because five main electors have more power than the others. The United States, the Soviet Union, China, Britain and France--the five permanent members of the Security Council--each have veto power.

Under the system, the Security Council nominates the secretary general, who must win nine of 15 council votes, including all the Big Five votes. The nomination must then be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the 159 General Assembly members, who have always approved the Security Council choice.

In the past, governments have proposed their favorite bureaucrats or diplomats. In some cases, candidates have proposed themselves. As a result, Urquhart and Childers said in their report, “the search for the best person for what is one of the world’s most important offices has thus become a chancy and, to some extent, self-serving process.”

But their proposal for an official search committee has been received warily by Security Council members, who evidently fear this could somehow take the decision out of their hands.

“I am not enthusiastic,” says Indian Ambassador Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, a member of the council. “Who is going to make up this committee? I think you have to leave the decision to the Security Council.”

The election, likely to be in early fall, will be complicated by the insistence of African governments that it is now Africa’s turn to run the U.N. Europe, Asia and Latin America have had their chances, but never Africa. (The former secretaries general are Trygve Lie of Norway; Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden; U Thant of Burma, now Myanmar; Waldheim of Austria, and Perez de Cuellar of Peru.)

Non-African ambassadors are troubled by this argument, however. They believe that a job of this importance should not be tied to geography.

Still, the argument may be difficult to resist, especially if the African countries agree on a single candidate--a consensus that could be difficult to reach. Ghana has proposed Dadzie in letters to all U.N. delegations; Nigeria is expected to do the same soon for Obasanjo. Other African candidates are possible as well. The Africans will try to settle on a single candidate at the annual summit of the Organization of African Unity in Nigeria next month.

Although campaigning is low-key, the secretary general’s election has had moments of high drama. In 1981, the Security Council struggled for six weeks before electing Perez de Cuellar.

The leaders for the first 16 ballots were Waldheim, seeking an unprecedented third five-year term, and Salim, then Tanzania’s foreign minister.

But China, insistent on a Third World secretary general, kept vetoing Waldheim. And the United States, suspicious of what it regarded as Tanzanian radicalism, kept vetoing Salim, who had not helped his cause by dancing in the aisles 10 years before when the General Assembly defied the United States and seated Communist China in place of Taiwan.

As a result of the deadlock, Waldheim and Salim withdrew; the council then considered nine others. The council finally settled on Perez de Cuellar. The Soviets joined three other countries in abstaining from the 10-1 vote for the Peruvian diplomat.

In discussing what they are seeking in a new secretary general, most diplomats insist on the need for someone efficient at administering the secretariat of more than 15,000 employees, someone smooth in articulating the viewpoint and meaning of the U.N. Although widely lauded for his quiet, adept diplomacy, Perez de Cuellar, a poor manager who is barely audible when speaking to reporters, is looked on as weak in administration and communications.

And although the U.N. may need a skilled manager and communicator, there is little doubt that another issue will rule the selection: Ever since the era of the aggressive Hammarskjold, the Security Council’s Big Five have been suspicious of any hint of independence in a secretary general.

“We are not interested in a guy who is so totally mindless that he wants to impose his ideas on everyone,” says an American diplomat. “But I don’t think you have to have a complete wimp in charge.”

The Making of a Secretary General

Insiders say that the U.N.’s secretary general should be a highly trained diplomat who can efficiently administer the organization of more than 15,000 employees. Top communication skills are considered vital, especially the ability to articulate the viewpoint and meaning of the U.N. Although campaigning is low-key, the elections can be dramatic. The current office-holder, Jaview Perez de Cuellar of Peru, was selected in 1981 after a six-week struggle-and 16 ballots.

Others Who Have Held the Job

Four other men have served as secretary general. Their countries and the year each assumed the post: Trygve Lie, Norway, 1946 Dag Hammarskjold, Sweden, 1953 U Thant, Burma, 1961 Kurt Waldheim, Austria, 1972

Among Those Mentioned to Succeed Perez de Cuellar Eduard Shevardnadze, former foreign minister, Soviet Union Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister, Britain Olusegun Obasanjo, former president, Nigeria Kenneth Dadzie, head of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (in Geneva), Ghana Oscar Arias Sanchez, president, Costa Rica