![\"Disturbed](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/5e60b7e42300007b180bfaab.jpeg?cache=vxueegg1ak&ops=scalefit_720_noupscale\")
P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar\u2019s 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\u2019s ambassador to France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he began his tenure as U.N. secretary-general on Jan. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Serving as U.N. undersecretary-general for special political affairs, he emerged as the dark horse candidate in December 1981 after a six-week election deadlock between U.N. chief Kurt Waldheim and Tanzanian Foreign Minister Salim Ahmed Salim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once elected, he quickly made his mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disturbed by the United Nations\u2019 dwindling effectiveness, he sought to revitalize the world body\u2019s faulty peacekeeping machinery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His first step was to \u201cshake the house\u201d with a highly critical report in which he warned: \u201cWe are perilously near to a new international anarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and with conflicts raging in Afghanistan and Cambodia and between Iran and Iraq, he complained to the General Assembly that U.N. resolutions \u201care increasingly defied or ignored by those that feel themselves strong enough to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe problem with the United Nations is that either it\u2019s not used or misused by member countries,\u201d he said in an interview at the end of his first year as U.N. secretary general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During his decade as U.N. chief, P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar would earn a reputation more for diligent, quiet diplomacy than charisma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLe ton fait la chanson,\u201d he was fond of saying, meaning that melody is what makes the song and not the loudness of the singer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe has an amiable look about him that people mistake for through and through softness,\u201d said an aide, who described him as tough and courageous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faced early in his first term with a threatened U.S. cutoff of funds in the event of Israel\u2019s ouster, he worked behind the scenes to stop Arab efforts to deprive the Jewish state of its General Assembly seat. There was muted criticism from the Arab camp that he had given the Americans the right of way in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In dealing with human rights issues, he chose the path of \u201cdiscreet diplomacy.\u201d He refrained from publicly rebuking Poland for refusing to allow his special representative into the country to investigate allegations of human rights violations during the Warsaw regime\u2019s 1982 crackdown on the Solidarity trade union movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July 1986, P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar underwent a quadruple coronary bypass operation, putting in question his availability for a second term. From the outset, P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar had insisted that he would be a one-term secretary-general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upset with what he viewed as member states\u2019 reluctance to pitch in to help the world body out of a financial crisis, he told the New York Times in September 1986, \u201cI don\u2019t see any reason why I should preside over the collapse of the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he did come back for a second term after a groundswell of support for his candidacy, including a conversation with President Ronald Reagan, who \u2014 in the words of the U.N. chief\u2019s spokesman \u2014 expressed \u201chis personal support for the secretary-general.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust about all the Western countries have told him they\u2019d like to see him stay on,\u201d a Western diplomatic source said at the time. \u201cThere is no visible alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike his predecessor, Kurt Waldheim who was regarded as a \u201cworkaholic\u201d and who spent long hours in his office, P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar liked to get away from it all. \u201cHe is very jealous of his own privacy,\u201d a close aide said.Subscribe to The Morning Email.Wake up to the day’s most important news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen I can, I read everything but United Nations documents,\u201d P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar confided to a reporter. Once on a flight to Moscow, an aide observed that \u201cin the midst of it all, the secretary-general had time for splendid literature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trilingual, P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar read French, English and Spanish literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar spent much of his second term working behind the scenes on the hostage issue, resulting in the release of Westerners held in Lebanon, including the last and longest-held American hostage, journalist Terry Anderson, who was freed Dec. 4, 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All told, P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar\u2019s diplomacy helped bring an end to fighting in Cambodia and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly after midnight on Jan. 1, 1992, he walked out of U.N. headquarters to his waiting limousine, no longer the secretary-general, but having attained his final goal after hours of tough negotiations: a peace pact between the Salvadoran government and leftist rebels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMr. P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar played a crucial role in a number of diplomatic successes \u2014 including the independence of Namibia, an end to the Iran-Iraq War, the release of American hostages held in Lebanon, the peace accord in Cambodia and, in his very last days in office, a historic peace agreement in El Salvador,\u201d said Guterres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Javier P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar was born in Lima on Jan. 19, 1920. His father a \u201cmodest businessman,\u201d was an accomplished amateur pianist, according to the former secretary-general. The family traced its roots to the Spanish town of Cu\u00e9llar, north of Segovia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Peru, the family belonged to the educated rather than the landowning class. \u201cHe went to the right schools,\u201d a countryman at the United Nations once said of P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He received a law degree from Lima\u2019s Catholic University in 1943 and joined the Peruvian diplomatic service a year later. He would go on to postings in France, Britain, Bolivia and Brazil before returning to Lima in 1961, where he served in a number of high-level ministry posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was ambassador to Switzerland and then became Peru\u2019s first ambassador to the Soviet Union while concurrently accredited to Poland. Other assignments included the post of secretary-general of the Peruvian Foreign Ministry and chief delegate to the United Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After leaving the U.N. P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar made an unsuccessful bid for Peru\u2019s presidency in 1995 against the authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, whose 10-year autocratic regime crumbled in November 2000 amid corruption scandals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the age of 80, P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar emerged from retirement in Paris and returned to Peru to take on the mantle of foreign minister and cabinet chief for provisional President Valentin Paniagua.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His impeccable democratic credentials lent credibility to an interim government whose mandate was to deliver free and fair elections. Eight months later, newly elected President Alejandro Toledo asked him to serve as Ambassador to France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between foreign assignments, he was professor of diplomatic law at the Academia Diplomatica del Peru and of international relations at the Peruvian Academy for Air Warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Transferring to the United Nations in 1975, he was appointed by Waldheim as the secretary-general\u2019s special representative in Cyprus. During his two years on the divided island he helped to promote intercommunal peace talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a brief stint as Peru\u2019s ambassador to Venezuela, he returned to the United Nations in 1979 as undersecretary-general for special political affairs. In that capacity, he undertook delicate diplomatic missions to Indochina and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar resigned his U.N. post in May 1981 \u2014 just before the election campaign for U.N. secretary-general heated up \u2014 and returned to the Peruvian diplomatic service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, he encountered political problems at home when he was nominated by President Fernando Belaunde Terry to be ambassador to Brazil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The nomination failed to win Senate approval. There was no public debate, but congressional sources in Lima said opposition came from Javier Alva Orlandini, Peruvian vice president and leader of the ruling Popular Action Party. The sources said Orlandini resented P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar\u2019s participation in the swearing in of the military junta that overthrew Belaunde Terry in 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar maintained that, as secretary-general of the Peruvian foreign ministry at the time, he was required by protocol to take part in the ceremony even though he had no pro-junta leanings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belaunde Terry, restored to power in 1980, reaffirmed his confidence in P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar by recommending him for nomination as U.N. secretary-general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar married the former Marcela Temple. He had a son, Francisco, and a daughter, Cristina, by a previous marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His funeral will be held Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LIMA, Peru (AP) \u2014 Javier P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar, 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, has died. He was 100. His son, Francisco P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar, said his father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"UN](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/5e60b8362300009b13dde0c6.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale\")
![\"Pérez](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/5e60b7fb260000cd1fb603f7.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale\")