After a university career centred on worldwide relations, including a spell at Columbia University in NY, he became Egypt’s minister of state for foreign affairs in 1977, under president Anwar al-Sadat.
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Honest condolences were also expressed by Oh Joon, President of the UN Economic and Social Council, who hailed Mr. Boutros-Ghali as an early backer of the concept of peace-building.
Because of this stance Boutros-Ghali came under vast pressure and criticism from some Member States of the UN, Mbeki said. Late in 1996, the Security Council voted overwhelmingly to give him another term. The U.S. president at the time, Bill Clinton, and other world leaders opposed sending U.N. peacekeepers to the tiny Central African nation or intervening to stop the massacres, although Clinton later acknowledged that he regretted the lack of intervention. He penned a defiant and embittered memoir, Unvanquished, denouncing his treatment by Washington. He stepped into the post in 1992 at a time of dramatic world changes, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold…
The UN Security Council was the first to announce Boutros-Ghali’s death on Tuesday. Some see him as seeking to establish the U.N.’s independence from the world superpower, the United States.
“In particular, through his landmark report “An Agenda for Peace” and the subsequent agendas for development and democratisation”.
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.
Following Sadat’s assassination, Boutros-Ghali continued to serve in high leadership positions in the country over the next 15 years, including as deputy prime minister and secretary of state.
His inability to reform the debt-ridden United Nations irritated the US which was then, and remains today, the largest source of funding for the body and its peacekeeping efforts.
But the honeymoon was short-lived.
US troops had entered Somalia in 1992 as part of a United Nations mission to feed starving victims of internal chaos.
Boutros-Ghali was jeered in Sarajevo, Mogadishu and Addis Ababa.
Washington’s hostility towards him meant he only served one term as United Nations chief.
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Even more than money, the United Nations needed American support for peacekeeping operations. The U.N. blue helmets were empowered only to secure humanitarian aid convoys and had orders to avoid battling the Serb forces laying siege to the capital Sarajevo and other towns across the former Yugoslav republic. Two years later, Boutros-Ghali was present at the White House when Israel and Egypt, which had fought four wars in 30 years, signed their monumental peace agreement.
