Over the years, virtually every UN department, from such major entities as the one that manages peacekeeping operations on down, has done some tinkering with its mechanisms -- even more so since Washington's clamor for UN reform rose to a crescendo and Secretary General Annan put everybody on notice to examine the beast within and spruce up wherever necessary.

DPI has gone through more than its fair share of fine tuning, even during the Organization's first years, when its image-burnishing mandate was a lot easier to execute than it is now in 2002. There was a veritable army then of permanent correspondents -- as many as three or four reporters per major bureau not unusual -- and a daily diet of cold war clashes in the Security Council or the General Assembly kept UN stories in the nightly network newscasts and on the following day's front pages, building professional reputations like that of A. M. Rosenthal, The New York Times's man who went on to become its executive editor.

With so many journalists to share the load in an Organization with far fewer member states than today's 190, DPI was valuable but not absolutely essential. Still, journalists have never lacked an excuse to gripe. Many were dissatisfied with the product then and their successors in today's trimmed-down bull pen are still complaining. "Largely useless and terribly slow" was the phrase quoted by the Times's Lynda Richardson in an article last year about Tharoor and his department that mentioned its alleged shortcomings.

This, of course, is not how many within the UN system see DPI. "The torchbearer of the Organization" is what the General Assembly's intergovenmental committee on information called the department in its recent report on a proposed reorientation of the communications mission. "The Department seeks nothing more than to measure up to its simply stated aspiration for the Organization's indispensable work to achieve the greatest possible impact on the hearts and minds of the peoples of the world," the authors stated grandly. They argued, moreover, that some UN activities -- spreading information, for example -- are too important to worry about mundane matters like "strict cost considerations."

Neither former ambassador Holbrooke nor a bottom line-conscious Congress would agree with that. Devoting much of his last press conference to an anti-DPI diatribe before he stepped back into private life, Holbrooke's description of the department was a "swollen mess."

That harsh hyperbole may have helped the Secretary General make up his mind on an urgent leadership change and move up his friend and ally Tharoor from director of communications and special projects (never quite identified) to take charge of the department. Tharoor, a national of India, is one of the UN's fast-rising stars. In 1998, the World Economic Forum included his name among an elite group of those sure to be touched by destiny as tomorrow's global movers and shakers. At the age of 46, he is already mentioned as a possible future UN Secretary General -- supposing that India's arch rival Pakistan does not contrive to erect a roadblock.

At DPI, he replaced a drearily inadequate Japanese former ambassador that the Secretary General had tried not to hire in the first place. However, Tokyo, which can not stand to be rebuffed, insisted on the man's appointment and declined to substitute another nominee -- Annan having decided that, for the third time, the information post should go to Japan.

The official announcement, in January of 2001, that Tharoor was coming on board said the transfer was only an "interim" measure and Annan did nothing to counter the idea that he was only gaining time for a search for a permanent undersecretary general, possibly from Latin America and preferably a woman with media experience. If this was not subterfuge and the actual plan was indeed to retain Tharoor, evidently the sought-after new candidate was never found and the Indian official was recently confirmed in his formerly temporary post. That meant elevating two ranks in the UN civil service hierarchy, along with full status as a member of the Secretary General's political and administrative cabinet. He is likely to remain at the head of DPI through the completion of Annan's own term, on Dec. 31, 2006.

Considering the critical role that the dissemination of news and information plays in politics and diplomacy, not to mention economics, and never more so than since the dawn of the modern digital age, the choice of who ran DPI -- which, at one stage was downgraded to a mere Office -- never seemed to be a matter for compelling concern to most of Annan's predecessors. But none was as media-conscious or media-friendly as Annan is, or had the incumbent's communications skills and charisma. Few heads of the department lasted very long. Nationals of Chile, Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Lebanon and Japan rang the changes. Hands-on media experience was seldom a stated requirement.

That may not have been the shortcoming that journalists liked to make of it. The Brazilian Hernane Tavares de Sa, appointed by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in what was regarded as a moment of inspiration because he actually had worked at a magazine, turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Hailed for being the first real newsman in the job -- he edited the Rio de Janeiro news weekly Visao -- the burly, bullet-headed Brazilian quickly turned the post into his own fiefdom, employing its several perquisites to a fare-thee-well. There were frequent visits to Paris and Carey Cadillac was called often, at UN expense, for limousine service even for trips to nearby restaurants.

Eventually, Tavares departed under a cloud, leaving a reported $30,000 worth of unreimbursed telephone bills, which the UN was obliged to write off. Biting the hand that fed, the departed undersecretary general later published "The Play Within the Play," his indictment of what he perceived was wrong with the UN.

Shashi Tharoor is an author, too, and a good one. Also, he has an authentic journalistic background. He entered the UN system, in 1978, as an information officer.

Born in London, where his father was an executive of the newspaper The Statesman, he moved to India as a child. Showing early talent, he was being published in newspapers and magazines at the tender age of 10. At 20, he won a young journalists award. Today, he is acclaimed as one of South Asia's foremost writers, with six books to his credit, including one that was made into a movie. He has also produced an astonishing and astonishingly varied output of articles for publications in India, the US and Europe. He is also a regular columnist for Newsweek International, which boldly decided to run columns by a flack for the first time.

"Not your garden variety public relations executive," observed the trade publication The Public Relations Strategist dryly in an otherwise admiring introduction to an interview shortly after his interim DPI appointment was announced. (Public relations managers are not necessarily noted for their writing skills or even their charisma, which Tharoor has in copious amounts.)

Like his boss Kofi Annan, Tharoor came to the US on an academic scholarship. Continuing the whiz kid trajectory begun when his family moved from England to India, he earned his Ph.D at the prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University at the age of 22, having collected two master's degrees there.

Already, there is talk among UN diplomats that Tharoor would be a worthy successor to Annan. Indeed, because of his closeness to American officials, if Tharoor is nominated by his native India, then Washington is thought likely to persuade Pakistan to accept his candidacy.

Does Tharoor think of himself as an intellectual? "I have not really done enough academic work, I think, to qualify, to deserve, that designation," he insisted modestly in response to a question by the Strategist's interviewer.

His first job in the UN system was in public information at the Geneva headquarters of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Annan began his UN career in Geneva, too, at the World Health Organization. Tharoor went on to run the refugee agency's office in Singapore at the height of the Vietnamese "boat people" crisis.

In the trade paper interview, he movingly told this story. "I remember one family which had left Vietnam in a tiny boat with a cannibalized tractor engine, which, sure enough, in a couple of days conked out . . . The parents had two small babies and actually slit their fingers to get the babies to suck their blood so they could survive. When they were finally rescued, by an American ship as it happens, they couldn't stand up to climb the [ship's] ladder . . . We rushed them to the hospital, treated them, brought them to the camp in Singapore, gave them English lessons and everything else.

"And in a few months to see the same family dressed, healthy, heading off to a new life in the United States. . . There are few jobs that can give you satisfaction like that."

Also in the interview, he used the verboten words "public relations" in tracing his return to the UN information field as an executive in the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, where he was assigned by Annan, to the task, as he put it, of "answering the tough questions." That led to duties for the Secretary General that he compares to those of David Gergen or George Stephanopoulos in the Clinton White House. However, these were spinmeisters.

Tharoor emphatically denies this was ever his role -- despite some contrary evidence, reporters say. Annan, he explained, felt there was need to rehabilitate the UN image, "not by spin doctoring, but by just letting the world understand what it was we did and understand it more clearly than before."

Like staff in Washington who hesitate to claim personal credit for successes attained but give all glory to the president, while themselves absorb blame for his failures, Tharoor considers that his boss is the true hero in the fight for a favorable UN image. For example, for the first time in UN history, officials now are encouraged, by written guidelines, to talk to journalists on the record on questions within their competence. This, he says, was Annan's doing. "The prior practice, frankly, was that bureaucrats were not supposed to speak to the press," he recalls.

How slow the UN was in developing public relations skills -- like the term or not -- may be judged from the fact that U Thant, who was wont sometimes to call himself a former journalist, having written occasionally for newspapers in Burma, was the first secretary general to name a full-time spokesman.

Since the first holder, Ramses Nassif, an Egyptian, that position has expanded enormously and related operations now occupy most of the physical space on the third floor of the secretariat building. Fred Eckhard presides over what is known as the Spokesman's Office. Eckhard, an American who, like Tharoor, was close to Annan in the department of peacekeeping operations before he moved up to Secretary General, is widely admired for his forthright manner, and for doing his homework. He is not part of DPI, but his staff of information officers are.

Despite obvious possibilities for turf wars, Eckhard and Tharoor seem to have a good rapport. Handling old chestnuts, fior instance, like persistent Congressional criticisms of the so-called "bloated bureacracy" and endemic "waste, mismanagement and abuse," is an assignment more for Tharoor than for Eckhard.

Given its wide responsibilities, DPI may scarcely be considered bloated. Some 300 staff spread the UN message through its information centers away from New York -- there's one in Washington -- and 400-odd work at the headquarters, where their duties include meetings coverage. Cost-cutters have proposed eliminating or at least limiting this service, but it's too valuable for delegates, most of whom use the DPI news summaries for their missions' dispatches to home governments.

President Bush's UN people have been a lot kinder to DPI than Holbrooke ever was, going out of their way lately to praise the new leader and the department's new-found emphasis on modern communications technology -- which the US mission wants more of. In this regard, Tharoor is a valuable asset and US ally. The UN's well constructed Web site, available in six languages, averaged 4 million visits a day last year, according to Annan. That total is thought to be running even higher today.

Among the issues frequently emphasized is the fight against international terrorism and the UN's vital role in support of the US and free peoples everywhere in this war.