Javier Perez de Cuellar, UN Leader in War-Torn Time, Dies at 100

(Bloomberg) -- Javier Perez de Cuellar, a former United Nations secretary-general whose diplomacy brought an end to the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq and who later tried to stop a U.S.-led campaign against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, has died. He was 100.

He died on March 4 at his home in Peru, the Associated Press reported, citing his son, Francisco Perez de Cuellar. The current head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement that de Cuellar “was an accomplished statesman, a committed diplomat and a personal inspiration who left a profound impact on the United Nations and our world.”

The first UN secretary-general from Latin America, de Cuellar served from January 1982 to December 1991, a period when the Soviet Union unraveled and democracies arose in Eastern Europe. He was credited with helping mediate an end to the Iran-Iraq war, a ferocious conflict between two of the Middle East's biggest oil producers that killed as many as 1 million people on both sides. He traveled to Baghdad and Tehran to coax leaders toward peace and in 1987 won Security Council approval for a resolution that led to negotiations for a cease-fire implemented 13 months later.

“In his own quiet way he was rather effective, even though he was not well known to the public,” former UN under-secretary-general Brian Urquhart said. “He was in very good standing with the UN members because they trusted him.”

Escalation Feared

Security Council Resolution 598, adopted July 20, 1987, during the Iran-Iraq war, said the UN's highest decision-making body was “deeply concerned that further escalation and widening of the conflict may take place.” After getting a truce between the warring sides, the UN began a peacekeeping operation to bolster the peace.

In 1991, after Iraq invaded oil-rich Kuwait and the U.S. was poised to start an offensive to drive out Hussein's troops, de Cuellar tried to broker a settlement during a trip to Baghdad. Hussein dismissed his proposal to withdraw from Kuwait in return for progress being made in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Twelve years later, the day before the U.S. began a war to topple Hussein, de Cuellar went on Peruvian television to say the invasion would be illegal without the explicit authorization of the UN Security Council. The U.S. and Britain invaded without that specific approval, saying Hussein had violated existing UN mandates that he disarm.

Reluctant Regimes

De Cuellar once likened the job of the UN to that of a doctor treating a recalcitrant patient.

“I have written a prescription to help the patient,” he said. “If the patient doesn't want all the pills I've recommended, that's up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.”

De Cuellar's diplomatic career continued after he left the UN, where he was succeeded by Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Peru in 1995. He was named by then-President Valentin Paniagua as interim prime minister and foreign minister in November 2000. He held those jobs until July 2001. He was named Peru's ambassador to France and held that post until he retired in July 2004.

Born on Jan. 19, 1920, into an upper-middle-class family in Lima and educated in Catholic schools, de Cuellar joined the Peruvian foreign ministry in 1940. He was a professional diplomat who spent most of his career outside Peru, at posts in Britain, Brazil, Bolivia, Poland, the former Soviet Union, Switzerland and Venezuela.

He was named Peru's ambassador to the UN in 1971 and held that post until 1975, when he went to work for the world body, initially as an envoy to Cyprus. De Cuellar became under-secretary-general for political affairs in 1981 and secretary-general a year later.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Varner in New York at sgittelson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net, Laurence Arnold

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