Former United Nations secretary-general dies at 100

LIMA, Peru — Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the two-term United Nations secretary-general who brokered a historic cease-fire between Iran and Iraq in 1988 and who in later life got here out of retirement to assist re-establish democracy in his Peruvian homeland, died Wednesday, Peru’s overseas ministry stated. He was 100.

His son, Francisco Pérez de Cuéllar, stated his father died at residence of pure causes. The previous diplomat was “an impressive Peruvian, a full-bodied democrat, who dedicated his life and work to creating our country nice,” tweeted Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra late Wednesday.

Pérez de Cuéllar’s demise ends an extended diplomatic profession that introduced him full-circle from his first posting as secretary at the Peruvian embassy in Paris in 1944 to his later job as Peru’s ambassador to France.

When he began his tenure as U.N. secretary-general on Jan. 1, 1982, he was a little-known Peruvian who was a compromise candidate at a time when the United Nations was held in low esteem.

Serving as U.N. undersecretary-general for particular political affairs, he emerged because the dark horse candidate in December 1981 after a six-week election impasse between U.N. chief Kurt Waldheim and Tanzanian Overseas Minister Salim Ahmed Salim.

As soon as elected, he shortly made his mark.

Disturbed by the United Nations’ dwindling effectiveness, he sought to revitalize the world physique’s defective peacekeeping equipment.

His first step was to “shake the home” with a extremely crucial report by which he warned: “We're perilously close to to a new worldwide anarchy.”

With the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and with conflicts raging in Afghanistan and Cambodia and between Iran and Iraq, he complained to the Basic Meeting that U.N. resolutions “are more and more defied or ignored by people who really feel themselves robust sufficient to take action.”

“The problem with the United Nations is that both it’s not used or misused by member nations,” he stated in an interview at the top of his first yr as U.N. secretary common.

During his decade as U.N. chief, Pérez de Cuéllar would earn a fame more for diligent, quiet diplomacy than charisma.

“Le ton fait la chanson,” he was fond of claiming, which means that melody is what makes the track and not the loudness of the singer.

“He has an amiable look about him that folks mistake for by means of and through softness,” stated an aide, who described him as robust and brave.

Faced early in his first time period with a threatened U.S. cutoff of funds within the event of Israel’s ouster, he labored behind the scenes to cease Arab efforts to deprive the Jewish state of its Basic Meeting seat. There was muted criticism from the Arab camp that he had given the People the suitable of method within the Center East.

In dealing with human rights issues, he chose the trail of “discreet diplomacy.” He avoided publicly rebuking Poland for refusing to allow his special representative into the nation to research allegations of human rights violations in the course of the Warsaw regime’s 1982 crackdown on the Solidarity commerce union movement.

In July 1986, Pérez de Cuéllar underwent a quadruple coronary bypass operation, putting in question his availability for a second time period. From the outset, Pérez de Cuéllar had insisted that he can be a one-term secretary-general.

Upset with what he seen as member states’ reluctance to pitch in to help the world body out of a monetary crisis, he advised the New York Occasions in September 1986, “I don’t see any purpose why I ought to preside over the collapse of the group.”

But he did come back for a second time period after a groundswell of help for his candidacy, together with a conversation with President Ronald Reagan, who — within the words of the U.N. chief’s spokesman — expressed “his personal help for the secretary-general.”

“Nearly all of the Western nations have informed him they’d wish to see him keep on,” a Western diplomatic source stated at the time. “There isn't a visible various.”

In contrast to his predecessor, Kurt Waldheim who was considered a “workaholic” and who spent lengthy hours in his office, Pérez de Cuéllar appreciated to get away from it all. “He's very jealous of his personal privateness,” an in depth aide stated.

“Once I can, I learn the whole lot but United Nations paperwork,” Pérez de Cuéllar confided to a reporter. As soon as on a flight to Moscow, an aide noticed that “in the midst of all of it, the secretary-general had time for splendid literature.”

Trilingual, Pérez de Cuéllar learn French, English and Spanish literature.

Pérez de Cuéllar spent a lot of his second term working behind the scenes on the hostage challenge, resulting within the launch of Westerners held in Lebanon, including the final and longest held American hostage, journalist Terry Anderson, who was freed Dec. four, 1991.

All tolled, Pérez de Cuéllar’s diplomacy helped deliver an end to preventing in Cambodia and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Shortly after midnight on Jan. 1, 1992, he walked out of U.N. headquarters to his waiting limousine, not the secretary-general, but having attained his remaining aim after hours of robust negotiations: a peace pact between the Salvadoran authorities and leftist rebels.


Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was born in Lima on Jan. 19, 1920. His father a “modest businessman,” was an completed novice pianist, in response to the previous secretary-general. The household traced its roots to the Spanish town of Cuéllar, north of Segovia.

In Peru, the family belonged to the educated moderately than the landowning class. “He went to the correct faculties,” a countryman at the United Nations once stated of Pérez de Cuéllar.

He acquired a regulation diploma from Lima’s Catholic College in 1943 and joined the Peruvian diplomatic service a yr later. He would go on to postings in France, Britain, Bolivia and Brazil before returning to Lima in 1961, where he served in numerous high-level ministry posts.

He was ambassador to Switzerland and then turned Peru’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union while concurrently accredited to Poland. Different assignments included the publish of secretary-general of the Peruvian Overseas Ministry and chief delegate to the United Nations.

After leaving the U.N. Pérez de Cuéllar made an unsuccessful bid for Peru’s presidency in 1995 towards the authoritarian chief Alberto Fujimori, whose 10-year autocratic regime crumbled in November 2000 amid corruption scandals.

At the age of 80, Pérez de Cuéllar emerged from retirement in Paris and returned to Peru to tackle the mantle of overseas minister and cabinet chief for provisional President Valentin Paniagua.

His impeccable democratic credentials lent credibility to an interim authorities whose mandate was to ship free and truthful elections. Eight months later, newly elected President Alejandro Toledo requested him to function Ambassador to France.

Between overseas assignments, he was professor of diplomatic regulation at the Academia Diplomatica del Peru and of international relations on the Peruvian Academy for Air Warfare.

Transferring to the United Nations in 1975, he was appointed by Waldheim because the secretary-general’s particular representative in Cyprus. Throughout his two years on the divided island he helped to promote intercommunal peace talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

After a quick stint as Peru’s ambassador to Venezuela, he returned to the United Nations in 1979 as undersecretary-general for special political affairs. In that capacity, he undertook delicate diplomatic missions to Indochina and Afghanistan.

Pérez de Cuéllar resigned his U.N. submit in Might 1981 — simply before the election campaign for U.N. secretary-general heated up — and returned to the Peruvian diplomatic service.

Nevertheless, he encountered political issues at residence when he was nominated by President Fernando Belaunde Terry to be ambassador to Brazil.

The nomination did not win Senate approval. There was no public debate, however congressional sources in Lima stated opposition came from Javier Alva Orlandini, Peruvian vice chairman and chief of the ruling In style Action Celebration. The sources stated Orlandini resented Pérez de Cuéllar’s participation in the swearing in of the army junta that overthrew Belaunde Terry in 1968.

Pérez de Cuéllar maintained that, as secretary-general of the Peruvian overseas ministry on the time, he was required by protocol to participate within the ceremony regardless that he had no pro-junta leanings.

Belaunde Terry, restored to energy in 1980, reaffirmed his confidence in Pérez de Cuéllar by recommending him for nomination as U.N. secretary-general.

Pérez de Cuéllar married the previous Marcela Temple. He had a son, Francisco, and a daughter, Cristina, by a previous marriage.

His funeral will probably be held at Peru’s overseas ministry on Friday.


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