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Bomb victim was top man at UN
20/08/2003 12:40 - (SA)
New York - Sergio Vieira de Mello, a United Nations veteran who served for more than 30 years as a troubleshooter in the world's most dangerous hotspots before becoming the top UN envoy in Iraq, was killed on Tuesday in a truck-bombing against his offices in Baghdad. He was 55.
After being named to the Iraqi post in June, the Brazilian diplomat said his top priority was to protect the interests of the Iraqi people under the United States-led occupation.
"I have been sent here with a mandate to assist the Iraqi people and those responsible for the administration of this land to achieve... freedom, the possibility of managing their own destiny and determining their own future," he said on arrival in Baghdad in June.
All the national flags that ring the UN headquarters' entrance in New York were removed from their poles. The blue and white UN flag was lowered to half-staff.
UN staffers gathered in corridors and around television sets as they mourned the loss of the man spokesman Fred Eckhard called "a rising star".
"He was a wonderful guy. He was the UN, in a way," said Salim Lone, the UN spokesperson in Baghdad. "Wherever there was suffering he was there. He was everywhere. He was a brilliant man, totally wedded to the United Nations."
The Iraq posting capped a career as the United Nations' crisis pointman, sent to conflict zones from Kosovo to Cyprus to East Timor to help end the bloodshed and rebuild in the aftermath.
Since September, he had served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, taking leave from the post to serve in Baghdad.
There, he had to rely on diplomacy and tough talk alike as the UN tried to find its place after the Iraqi war come close to rendering it obsolete. He had to work with the United States, even while distinguishing the world body from the occupation, unpopular with many Iraqis.
In his last interview published before his death, Vieira de Mello sympathised with Iraqi resentment at having foreign troops on their soil.
"It is traumatic. It must be one of the most-humiliating periods in their history. Who would like to see their country occupied? I would not like to see foreign tanks in Copacabana," said in an interview published on Monday.
Throughout his tenure in Baghdad, he took pains to remind everybody that the United Nations would be in the country long after US forces left and insisted that the world body - not the US-led coalition - should control the spending of Iraqi oil revenues.
- AP
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