1981 United Nations Secretary-General selection straw polls, an innovation that became the standard method for selecting a Secretary-General in future open selections. Waldheim's defeat also confirmed the informal two-term limit on the office of Secretary-General, and Pérez's selection firmly established the principle of regional rotation. The Secretary-General of the United Nations is appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council. Therefore, candidates for the office can be vetoed by any of the permanent members. In 1981, Kurt Waldheim of Austria was finishing up his second term as Secretary-General, despite Chinese preferences for a Secretary-General from the Third World. In the 1971
Secretary-General of the United Nations place behind the scenes. In the early 1960s, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev led an effort to abolish the Secretary-General position. The numerical superiority of the Western powers combined with the one state, one vote system meant that the Secretary-General would come from one of them, and would potentially be sympathetic towards the West. Khrushchev proposed to replace the Secretary-General with a three-person directorate (a "troika"): one member from the West, one from the Eastern Bloc, and one from the Non-Aligned powers. This idea failed because the neutral powers failed to back the Soviet proposal. The Secretary-General is appointed by