Ex-UN chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali dies

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian diplomat who led the United Nations in a chaotic 1990s tenure that began with hopes for peace after the Cold War, but failed to cope with genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, and ended in angry recriminations with Washington, died Tuesday in an Egyptian hospital.

Boutros-Ghali was the first Arab to serve as United Nations secretary-general, taking office in 1992 and serving a five-year term.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt sits in his office on his first working day at the United Nations in New York City on January 2, 1992.

His death was announced by Venezuela’s UN Ambassador Rafael Ramirez, who chairs the 15-member Security Council for February.

Under Mubarak, Boutros-Ghali was the architect of Egypt’s return to the center of affairs in the Organization of African Unity, the Nonaligned Movement and the Islamic Conference Organization.

He told Somali warlords and clan leaders to stop accusing the United Nations and him of colonialism, adding that Somalis should be anxious that former colonial powers would ignore their plight if they continued to fight.

Egypt’s state-run Ahram Online reported that he died Tuesday in a hospital in the Egyptian city of Giza, where he’d been admitted days earlier after breaking his leg.

Boutros-Ghali also had a hard relation with the incoming Clinton administration at his time of leadership.

Elected to the United Nations in the euphoria of the end of the Cold War and after the Gulf War, he had to face serious crises, conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Middle East and the genocide in Rwanda.

Burcea recalled that Boutros-Ghali wrote in his 1999 book Unvanquished, “In a world of many big and wealthy powers, it is the United Nation’s job to look out for those marginalized because of ethnicity, gender, religion, age, health, poverty or whatever reason”. In those positions, Boutros-Ghali played a pivotal role in negotiating the peace treaty signed between Israel and Egypt in March 1979, which also returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, a key Sadat goal.

Boutros Boutros Ghali was appointed as the 1 secretary General of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie or organisation of countries where French language is the first language or in regions where a significant proportion of the population speaks French. “Boutros Boutros-Ghali!” Seinfeld exclaims.

Boutros-Ghali was born on 14 November 1922 into a Coptic Christian family in Cairo, and educated at Cairo University and in Paris, where he established a lifelong connection with France.

But Boutros-Ghali regarded the veto as an assault on his record and integrity. After losing the election he went back to Egypt where he taught global law at Cairo University.

In 1977, then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat named him minister of state without portfolio, shortly before Sadat’s landmark visit to Israel to launch peace negotiations.