During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Egypt in January this year, Xi met with 10 people awarded for their outstanding contribution to the China-Egypt friendship, including former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
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Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian diplomat who led the United Nations in a 1990s tenure that began with hopes for peace after the Cold War but ended in disputes with Washington, died Tuesday in an Egyptian hospital.
Current UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called Boutros-Ghali “a memorable leader who rendered invaluable services to world peace and worldwide order”.
Presidency spokesperson Bongani Majola said, “The president says we pay tribute to the former UN Secretary General and wish to convey our deepest condolences to his family and country, Egypt. May his soul rest in peace”. Some see him as seeking to establish the U.N.’s independence from the world superpower, the United States.
Ban said: “Mr Boutros-Ghali was a fount of ideas, building on his long career as a professor of worldwide law”.
The ministry noted that “UN program document “An Agenda for Peace” prepared by Boutros Boutros-Ghali remains relevant today”. He was replaced by Kofi Annan.
Dr Boutros-Ghali was born into a Coptic Christian family in Cairo on Nov 14, 1922, and was educated at Cairo University and in Paris, where he established a lifelong connection with France.
United Nations flags in all duty stations were flown at half-mast in the late Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s honour.
In a move that perhaps gave further insight into Boutros-Ghali’s thinking on democratic practices, he endorsed the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, stressing the need to promote democratic participation of citizens at the global level.
In 1996, 10 Security Council members led by African states sponsored a resolution backing him for a second five-year term but the United States vetoed Boutros-Ghali when his reappointment came up for a vote.
Boutros-Ghali served as the United Nation’s sixth secretary-general.
The 15-member UN Security Council session kept a moment of silence in his honor on Tuesday. So Sadat turned to Boutros-Ghali, naming him acting foreign minister and minister of state for foreign affairs.
Ghali was a small-son of an Egyptian prime minister assassinated in 1910 by a nationalist.
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President Hosni Mubarak, who succeeded Sadat in October 1981, kept Boutros-Ghali in the same post.
