1996 United Nations Secretary-General selection a term beginning 1 January 1997. The 1996 selection marks the only time that a sitting Secretary-General was denied a second term. The elderly Boutros-Ghali initially intended to serve only one term, but he ran for a second term in 1996. Traditionally, the Secretary-General is entitled to run unopposed for a second term. No sitting Secretary-General had ever been denied a second term by a veto. In the 1950 selection, Trygve Lie was vetoed by the Soviet Union, but he was re-appointed by the General Assembly without a recommendation from the Security Council. In the 1976 selection, Kurt Waldheim received
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