Boutros Boutros-Ghali

He had long been closely associated with the ruling clique in Egypt. .His political career developed during the presidency of Anwar El Sadat. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Arab Socialist Union from $1974-$2499. He served as Egypt's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 1977 until early 1991. He then became Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs for several months before moving to the UN. As Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, he played a part in the peace agreements between President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

According to investigative journalist Linda Melvern, Boutros-Ghali approved a secret $26 million arms sale to the government of Rwanda in 1990 when he was Egyptian Foreign Minister, the weapons stockpiled by the Hutu regime as part of the fairly public, longterm preparations for the subsequent genocide. He was serving as UN Secretary-General when the killings occurred 4 years later.

UN career

Elected as secretary-general, the top post of the UN, in 1991, Boutros-Ghali's term in office remains controversial. He was criticised for the UN's failure to act during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which officially left over 1 million people dead, and he appeared unable to muster support in the UN for intervention in the continuing Angolan Civil War. One of the hardest tasks during his term was dealing with the crisis of the Yugoslav wars after the disintegration of former Yugoslavia. His reputation became entangled in the larger controversies over the effectiveness of the UN and the role of the United States in the UN. For his detractors, he came to symbolise the UN's alleged inaction in the face of humanitarian crises.

Nomination for second term

In 1996, ten Security Council members, led by African members Egypt, Guinea-Bissau and Botswana, sponsored a resolution backing Boutros-Ghali for a second five-year term, until the year 2001. However, the United States vetoed a second term for Boutros-Ghali. In addition to the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, South Korea, and Italy did not sponsor the resolution, although the four nations voted in support of Boutros-Ghali after the US had firmly declared its intention to veto. Although not the first vetoed (China vetoed the third term of Kurt Waldheim in 1981), Boutros-Ghali was the only UN secretary-general not to be elected to a second term in office. He was succeeded at the UN by Kofi Annan.

Richard Clarke (US counter-terrorism czar), Michael Sheehan, and James Rubin participated in what they called "Operation Orient Express". Clarke wrote, "Albright and I and a handful of others (Michael Sheehan, Jamie Rubin) had entered into a pact together in 1996 to oust Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations, a secret plan we had called Operation Orient Express, reflecting our hope that many nations would join us in doing in the UN head. In the end, the US had to do it alone (with its UN veto) and Sheehan and I had to prevent the President from giving in to pressure from world leaders and extending Boutros-Ghali's tenure, often by our racing to the Oval Office when we were alerted that a head of state was telephoning the President. In the end Clinton was impressed that we had managed not only to oust Boutros-Ghali but to have Kofi Annan selected to replace him. (Clinton told Sheehan and me, 'Get me a crow, I should eat a crow, because I said you would never pull it off.')"

Later life

From 1997 to 2002 Boutros-Ghali was Secretary-General of La Francophonie, an organisation of French-speaking nations. From 2003 to 2006, he served as the Chairman of the Board of the South Centre, an intergovernmental research organisation of developing countries. He is currently President of the Curatorium Administrative Council at the Hague Academy of International Law. In 2003 Boutros-Ghali was appointed as The Director of the Egyptian National Council of Human Rights, a position he still holds.

Since April 2007 Boutros-Ghali has supported the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and was one of the initial signatories of the Campaign's appeal. In a message to the Campaign, he stressed the necessity to establish democratic participation of citizens at the global level.

Works

Boutros-Ghali has published two memoirs:

• Egypt's road to Jerusalem (1997), about the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty
• Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga (1999), about his time as Secretary-General at the UN...and whatt is more {| class="wikitable" border="1"

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Quotes

• "It would be some time before I fully realised that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy… The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States."
• "The best way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence." -In describing his relationship with the unwieldy United Nations bureaucracy
• "Only stupid people don't change their minds." - On why he sought a second 5 year term as Secretary General of the UN, having initially planned on serving only one. "

See also

• List of prominent Copts