Leadership campaign

Representatives from the 58 nations that make up UNESCO's executive council were meeting in Paris on Monday to kick off debate over who should succeed Japan's Koichiro Matsuura as the organization's director general. The first round of voting is scheduled for Sept. 17.

Of the nine candidates, Hosni, who has been the Egyptian culture minister for the last 22 years, is among the frontrunners for the job as head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

He said he would like to see UNESCO use culture to promote international peace and improve education.

"These are grand words but ordinary people must they have a voice," he told Deutsche Welle. "One of my priorities would be to ensure that education is given greater emphasis. UNESCO must be inclusive and not keep the masses in ignorance about what they are doing."

Unfit for UNESCO position

But Hosni's bid has run into opposition after he said in May 2008 that he would "burn Israeli books if he found any in Egyptian libraries." He has since apologized for the statement, but that hasn't calmed his critics.

Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and French intellectuals Bernard-Henri Levy and Claude Lanzmann said "the international community must spare itself from the shame of appointing Hosni to the post of UNESCO director general."

In a May article for Le Monde newspaper, they added that similar statements to those he apologized for made Hosni an unfit choice for an organization that aims to be a unifying cultural force.

Bureaucratic backgrounds

Many of the candidates for the director general position have held posts within the European Union, the United Nations or UNESCO itself, but the organization would benefit from new insights, according to Federico Mayor, who served three terms as a UNESCO director general.

"What we must change is the developed countries must come back to multilateral roots of UNESCO and the United Nations instead of to groups of 7, 8 or 20," he said. "Now is the opportunity to establish very clearly that education, science, culture and communication must play a role at the global level."

Hosni added that communications and technology could also be used at a more personal level.

"We have to help women," he said. "We all know that mobile phones and text messages can be a very powerful means of communicating. I am not interested in technology for the sake of it. I want to build a whole network of contacts at all levels of society using advanced technology to help the disenfranchised."

Nine candidates

Hosni's main rival for the post is European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner, but Hosni is seen to have won support in Europe as an attempt to reach out to the Muslim world.

The nine candidates for the job are from Algeria, Austria, Benin, Bulgaria, Ecuador, Egypt, Lithuania, Russia and Tanzania. A maximum of five rounds of voting are permitted. The winning candidate will be confirmed in October by UNESCO's general assembly.

At its inception UNESCO was seen as a vehicle for carrying forward the idea of world peace, but today UNESCO is best known for its list of protected heritage sites.

Sylvia Smith (sms/AFP/dpa/AP)

Editor: Jennifer Abramsohn