Thanks, but no thanks

Now the dust has settled over the question of the next secretary-general of the United Nations, we can reveal one name that was not going to get very far, at least if its owner had anything to do with it.

Hanan Ashrawi, minister for higher education in the embryonic Palestinian state, could have been a contender on the strength of her role during the negotiations that led to the Oslo peace accord.

Asked if she was going to apply for the job, she was emphatic: "I would not wish that on my worst enemy," she told an audience at Amsterdam's Free University.