His predecessor was Han Seung-Soo of South Korea. But how many people outside the UN know that? In fact, the Seoul government changed after his election and the new regime would have dearly liked to replace Han with one of their own. Secretary General Kofi Annan had to issue a reminder that it was the man who was chosen, regardless of party affiliation. Han stayed and in fact was present to acknowledge on behalf of the membership the award of the Nobel Peace Prize last December, which the UN shared with its Secretary General, Annan.

Now comes Kavan, who will be the UN's top man protocolwise for the next 12 months. He's a national of the Czech Republic and was its foreign minister from 1998 until recently. But he was born in London (in 1946) to a Czech diplomat father and an English schoolteacher.

The father was recalled to Prague after the 1948 communist coup in what was then still known as Czechoslovakia. The elder Kavan was accused of treasonable conduct by the communists and, in a Stalinist trial, sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. Although released after four years, harsh treatment during his detention left its mark and he died in 1960, aged only 46.

Jan Kavan participated in the so-called "Prague spring," which was crushed by Warsaw Pact forces. He was blacklisted by the communists as an exponent of the "rightist movement." Emigrating back to his English birthplace in 1969, he lived in exile in Britain for the next 20 years and became a member of the Labor Party. (This is now the ruling party, with Tony Blair, its leader, serving as the current prime minister).

During his London period, Kavan actively supported Czech dissidents, including the human rights group known as Charter 77. As a consequence, he was stripped of his Czech citizenship by the unforgiving communist authorities.

Eventually returning to Prague (in 1989), he joined the so-called Velvet Revolution and was elected to the coordinating committee leading the fight for Czech democracy. In the first free parliamentary elections in 44 years, he was elected to the Federal Assembly and served as foreign policy spokesman for the Social Democratic Party.

Few occupants of the UN General Assembly presidency have had a more varied background and few brought to the job such broad skills. A former journalism student at Prague's Charles Univesity, Kavan put his training there to good use in London, where he founded and ran the Palach Press Agency, which reported on the drive for democracy in Czechoslovakia. He also helped found the East European Cultural Endowment, a group that drew attention to the plight of political prisoners.

He founded and edited the East European Reporter, whose honorary editorial board included Vaclav Havel, now the president of the Czech Republic.

Kavan has been a visiting professor at New York's Adelphi University and taught at Amherst. He has also lectured at Columbia, Stanford, Wellesley and the Harvard Center for European Studies. He is an honorary fellow of the London School of Economics.