Former UN secretary general Javier Perez de Cuellar dead at 100
- Javier Perez de Cuellar served as UN secretary general from 1981 to 1991 and was known for his efforts to reconcile warring parties
- He played a crucial role in securing release of American hostages as well as peace accords in Cambodia and El Salvador
Javier Perez de Cuellar, the two-term United Nations secretary general who brokered a historic ceasefire between Iran and Iraq in 1988 and who in later life came out of retirement to help re-establish democracy in his Peruvian homeland, died Wednesday. He was 100.
His son, Francisco Perez de Cuellar, said his father died at home of natural causes. Current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Peruvian diplomat a “personal inspiration”.
“Mr Perez de Cuellar’s life spanned not only a century but also the entire history of the United Nations, dating back to his participation in the first meeting of the General Assembly in 1946,” said Guterres in a statement late Wednesday.
Perez de Cuellar’s death ends a long diplomatic career that brought him full-circle from his first posting as secretary at the Peruvian embassy in Paris in 1944 to his later job as Peru’s ambassador to France.
When he began his tenure as UN secretary general on January 1, 1982, he was a little-known Peruvian who was a compromise candidate at a time when the United Nations was held in low esteem.
Serving as UN undersecretary-general for special political affairs, he emerged as the dark horse candidate in December 1981 after a six-week election deadlock between UN chief Kurt Waldheim and Tanzanian Foreign Minister Salim Ahmed Salim.