Boutros Boutros-Ghali startled a rare news conference in May 1994 by declaring that he might seek a second five year term as Secretary-General of the United Nations. "The question will be raised in 1996," said the seventy-one-year-old former Egyptian diplomat and law professor, "and it will depend on my physical capacities. If I am feeling in shape, quite honestly, I will say yes. On the other hand, if I don't feel well enough, then I won't request a second term." Until then, he had insisted that he did not intend to stand for a second term, a stance that allowed him to wield his independence like a shield of honor. Why had he changed his mind? "I believe that only stupid people don't change their mind," he replied.
The announcement infuriated Clinton administration officials, provoking mutterings in private about the fortunes of a snowball in hell. Boutros-Ghali's relations with American diplomats and officials had been tense for some time, and many were so exasperated with him that they intended to recommend a veto if he submitted to a vote in 1996.
There was a good deal of irony in this. The United States did not favor Boutros-Ghali the first time around, but for far different reasons. In 1991, he simply did not measure up to the standards that Bush administration officials had set for the new Secretary-General after the Persian Gulf War. He struck them as too elderly, too frail, too passive, too laconic, and too old-fashioned for the dynamic image on their minds. It was time for the UN to be led by someone with both weight and pizzazz.
President Bush's own personal choice was Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the garrulous and congenial Irish-Quebecker whose popularity was plummeting at home. But a furious protest from Third World ambassadors undercut Mulroney so badly that the embarrassed Canadians soon withdrew his candidacy. The Third Worlders insisted it was Africa's turn to fill the job. While the White House began a lackadaisical search for another suitable candidate, the State Department, wary of offending Egypt, voted perfunctorily for Boutros-Ghali on a succession of ballots, sure that he would never get the required nine votes to win. This proved a miscalculation. On November 21, 1991, while the Americans still searched, the Security Council elected Boutrous-Ghali as the sixth Secretary-General.
As Secretary-General, Boutrous-Ghali certainly did not exhibit any of the flair or dynamism that American officials once sought. But inward and moody and sometimes disdainful, Boutrous-Ghali became the most stubbornly independent Secretary-General in the half century history of the United Nations. He made the Secretary-General an international player in a way that had not been seen since the days of Dag Hammarskjold and the crisis in the Congo. While he did not have the same reverence and affection, Boutros-Ghali proved at least as active as Hammarskjold in crises and just as effective at expanding the role of the office. He was not the passive bureaucrat that fretful American officials once expected. The Clinton administration, in fact, soon wished that he were.
Boutros-Ghali's activism alarmed critics and prompted many to exaggerate his role. Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick accused him of trying to become "chief executive officer of the world" and '"the world's commander-in-chief." This widespread perception made it easy to turn him into a scapegoat. The Clinton administration succeeded in deluding the American public into believing it was Boutros-Ghali alone who led American soldiers to disaster in Somalia. Bosnians blamed Boutros-Ghali and the UN for the international paralysis that permitted Serbian aggression and ethnic cleansing to go on so long. His disdain for such emotion and lapses of logic only infuriated his critics and sharpened their barbs.
Boutros-Ghali is no smooth-talking diplomat. He ran the UN with the instincts of a suspicious politician and the brilliance of a former professor whose mind could absorb data and order it into policy alternatives with breathtaking ease. Once his logic pointed the way, he usually followed it consistently, even to a fault. He was so jealous of his independence that he did not even reward the early supporters like France and the African governments that ensured his election. A Christian Copt whose rise to the top was always blocked in Muslim Egypt, he did not expect more than meager rewards for his services. He knew how to shrug off insults. Nothing at the UN compared with the vitriol heaped upon him by the Arab world for negotiating the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. He knew that his power was limited. As Secretary-General, he depended on governments to supply him with troops for battle. He had no constituencies of voters to rally when powers like the United States slapped him down. Yet he refused to shrink within these limitations.
From United Nations, The First 50 Years, by Stanley Meisler, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1995, Reprinted by Permission
