U.N.’s Perez de Cuellar: It’s Persistence Over Personality

Nobel Peace Prizes have frequently gone to charismatic leaders, but if Javier Perez de Cuellar becomes the first U.N. secretary general to win the medal for his achievement of a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War, charisma will have had nothing to do with it.

Opportunity may be a more fitting word, because after a decade of somnolence, the United Nations has suddenly arrived at a juncture where all roads point to peace--not just in the Persian Gulf, but also in Afghanistan, the Western Sahara, southern Africa, Cambodia, Cyprus--possibly even in the seemingly most intractable conflict arena of all, the Middle East.

Although the 68-year-old Peruvian was not the leading player in each of these developing opportunities, he has played an important role in nearly all of them, and he could claim the prize for the successful conclusion of almost any one of them.

Perez de Cuellar created none of the opportunities. He is an international bureaucrat whose past successes owe more to persistence and patience than to brilliance and leadership. And even his legendary patience wore thin at times during the two weeks that he sought to bring Iraq and Iran to agreement, resulting in occasional testy lectures to reporters.

“I have to answer the same question 10 times,” he complained at the end of the second week. Later that day, when asked why he looked less hopeful, he replied, “It is because I am tired--and disappointed.”

Yet inside his office on the 38th floor of U.N. headquarters in New York, Perez de Cuellar remained an unfailingly polite listener as he strived to remain what in his own words he had set out to be--an honest broker. As evidence of his success, both sides gave him high praise at the end of the first phase of the negotiations.

Even if the secretary general got a good deal of help from the Western allies and concerned Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, he faced a daunting task in moving the Iraqis from their adamant initial demand that face-to-face talks must precede the declaration of a truce, and the Iranians from their equally adamant insistence that a cease-fire come first.

Dealing with the Iranians was easier at first, because they were the losers on the battlefield, suing for peace.

Tehran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, ran an effective public relations campaign, reflecting the dramatic policy change of his government, which for years until mid-July had rejected all peace-seeking overtures from the Security Council as a biased agent of the “Great Satan”--the United States.

By the end of the New York negotiations, Velayati had virtually wrapped himself in the blue U.N. flag, managing credibly to represent himself as the spirit of cooperation and his Iraqi counterpart, Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, as an obstructionist in the peace process.

While this was going on, a former Iraqi diplomat well acquainted with President Saddam Hussein of Iraq predicted correctly that the Baghdad government would not pursue its demand for direct talks ahead of any truce to the point of breaking off the negotiations.

“Saddam is too good a gambler not to quit when he’s ahead,” the former diplomat said.

At a crucial point on the second Saturday, Saddam made the right move, declaring in a broadcast message that Iraq would accept a truce provided Iran would pledge to enter direct talks “immediately after the cease-fire.”

It was left then for Perez de Cuellar to find the formula to bring the two sides together, a task made easier by the departure for home of the intractable Aziz. Two days later, the secretary general was able to present an agreed-upon timetable calling for a cease-fire effective Aug. 20 and face-to-face talks to begin in Geneva on Aug. 25.

While the results so far of the Iran-Iraq peace process have brought unprecedented acclaim for Perez de Cuellar, he and the principals are well aware that perhaps the hardest part still lies ahead. Although no other Security Council member has joined U.S. Ambassador Vernon A. Walters in his enthusiastic description of the secretary general as the world’s foremost statesman, there is no doubt that the quiet Peruvian’s stock is at its highest since he began his service here.

The successful outcome of the New York round of talks has brought new hope that the United Nations’ most nagging problem, a threat of bankruptcy largely posed by the refusal of the United States to pay more than $500 million in past-due assessments, may be solved before the organization runs out of cash in November.

The General Assembly will meet Tuesday to deal with financing the newly created U.N. Iran-Iraq Military Observation Group, which will supervise the Iran-Iraq cease-fire at a cost of $74 million for the first six months.

Although Washington has signaled its willingness to pay its share of the observation group’s costs, Perez de Cuellar is aiming beyond this. He has warned the Reagan Administration that global peacekeeping costs could add up to nearly $2 billion a year if agreements should be reached in all the African and Asian conflicts currently under negotiation.

And the United Nations itself must keep going, something it cannot do without restoration of the U.S. assessments, which were originally withheld to compel the organization to make budgetary reforms. Perez de Cuellar asserts that the reforms have been made but that the check from Washington has not arrived.

This month’s triumph makes it easier for Perez de Cuellar to be philosophical about a near-miss in his first chance to become a major peacemaker.

It occurred after Argentina’s military government invaded the British-ruled Falkland Islands in April, 1982. Only five months earlier, Perez de Cuellar had succeeded Kurt Waldheim at the helm of the world organization.

Aside from his lack of experience in the job, the secretary general faced a situation complicated by the fact that one of the belligerents, Britain, and one of its closest allies, the United States, are both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Odds were lengthened by the unified support Argentina received from Latin America.

Yet Perez de Cuellar maintained a strictly neutral posture and, in 11 days of hard negotiations, worked out a plan for withdrawal of the invasion force and establishment of an interim government under the U.N. flag while diplomats sought a more permanent solution. With the prize of a settlement within his grasp, Latin pride suddenly blocked the way. Argentina insisted that its flag must fly during the interim and the deal was off.

Britain recaptured the Falklands with an armada that included chartered merchant ships. Argentina’s defeat destroyed the armed forces’ image in the eyes of its citizens, a major factor in the restoration of a civilian, democratic government the following year.

Perez de Cuellar suffered a loss of moral stature in the view of many U.N. members when he was forced to back away from the Falklands in silence, and this increased his natural reluctance to attempt bold measures.

Now, six years later, he has bold initiatives going again at a moment when the United Nations needs a win much more than he does.

Perez de Cuellar acknowledged the situation when he was asked about reports that his initiatives could win him the Nobel Peace Prize.

“If the prize can be given to the organization as a whole, I shall be extremely pleased,” he said.