Editor's Question

He's got an annual budget of $7 billion. Why don't they tell us what his salary is? In the end, he's on our payroll! Challenge to Axis Readers - find out what Herve's salary is for "keeping the peace" and tell us in our Reader Comment section below.  - LMB

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Veteran French diplomat Herve Ladsous was appointed Friday as the new head of United Nations peacekeeping, preserving France's leadership of a key department at the world body.

Ladsous, currently chief of staff to French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, replaces Alain Le Roy, who held the job for three years and left last month. Le Roy's predecessor, Jean-Marie Guehenno, was also French.

Under an unofficial but generally accepted practice at the United Nations, major powers lay claim to certain key jobs.

With an annual budget of some $7 billion (4.3 billion pounds), peacekeeping is one of the most high-profile U.N. departments, with about 120,000 personnel around the world, most of them uniformed troops and police and many of them in Africa.

It faces challenges including uncooperative governments, attacks by militias and sporadic allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit trading.

Ladsous, a Chinese-speaking Asia specialist, was French ambassador to Indonesia from 2001 to 2003 and to China from 2006 to 2010. He has also had postings in Australia, Haiti and at the French U.N. missions in Geneva and New York.

A statement announcing the appointment by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Ladsous "brings to the (U.N.) position an acute political judgement, strong crisis-management capacities, especially in the area of peacekeeping, (and) a profound understanding of the challenges facing the United Nations."

"His capacity to build consensus is recognized by his peers all over the world," it added.

(Reporting by Patrick Worsnip; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: Swiss Info