The Inner Sanctum : With the Theatrics of the Cold War Gone, The U.N.’s Powerful Security Council Operates in Secrecy Where Vision and Personality Count Most

On weekends, the United Nations is usually as dormant as a fat cat after a full meal. But, behind closed doors, the private rooms of the Security Council bustle and crackle with tension this Saturday as the 15 ambassadors argue the wisdom of clamping new, tough sanctions on Serbia. The smaller countries, joined by France, demand a vote later that night. The United States and Britain are sympathetic but plead for a delay. Russia threatens to veto.

All the activity, all the talk, like most of the work of the Security Council these days, plays in secret, with no public or press present, with no stenographer or tape recorder taking words down. This account has been tacked together from the memories of participants.

One at a time, the American and West European members enter the small caucus room off the council’s lounge to meet with Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria and the four other members of the so-called nonaligned movement on the council. Arria is a 54-year-old former Caracas mayor and newspaper editor, an elegant man with thick wavy hair who steps down the corridors with a carved cane and brightens meetings with his pastel shirts. He irritates some ambassadors; they mutter that he lets his emotions drive his diplomacy. For more than a year, Arria has been exasperated by U.N. pussyfooting about Bosnia, its failure to halt the murderous Serb aggression. Joined by Muslim ambassadors who feel that the West has deliberately turned its back on their Bosnian brothers, Arria wants no more delay. French Ambassador Jean-Bernard Merimee agrees with him.

But the United States and Britain are wrestling with another concern--the stability of the government of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. If Arria pushes the sanction resolution, the British and American diplomats will vote for it but fear that the Russians will feel compelled to veto, not only killing the resolution but perhaps the peace process as well. Arria is adamant. “They are not going to veto,” he says.

“Don’t be so sure,” retorts an American envoy.

Arria has the role of the Security Council’s conscience because neither the United States nor Europe feels prepared to lead the United Nations on any strong measures to end the Serbian onslaught on the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Only the night before, at a closed-door session that lasted almost until midnight, Arria pleaded for the Russians to sympathize with the plight of the Muslims in the besieged town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.

“My country was never under siege,” the Venezuelan tells Russian Ambassador Yuli Vorontsov across the horseshoe-shaped table, “but Leningrad was under siege. I was in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) some time ago and went to the museum, and I saw how terrible this siege was for the courageous people in Leningrad, and I’m sure their ambassador realizes that Srebrenica is in the same conditions as Leningrad during the Second World War.”

Arria invites Vorontsov to the nonaligned caucus. The tall, bull-necked Russian, who wears thick glasses and a rumpled dark suit, is a well-liked diplomat with enough tenacity and professionalism to have served both Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Russian President Yeltsin as ambassador to the United Nations ambassador. Meeting in the bare caucus room this spring evening with Arria and the ambassadors from Pakistan, Morocco, Cape Verde and Djibouti, Vorontsov, speaking in English, explains that he is forced to follow his “standing orders” and will veto the resolution if it is presented. Vorontsov does not volunteer the reason, but everyone knows it: President Yeltsin fears that he will lose support in the April 25 referendum on his future, now just a week away, if it looks like he is abandoning Russia’s traditional allies, the Serbs.

“What’s new? What has changed? What has happened in Srebrenica for us to act so hastily?” Vorontsov asks. Arria replies that, for all practical purposes, Srebrenica has succumbed to the Serbs. “The Serbs are terrorizing the population,” the Venezuelan says. “They are strangling them. They are playing with them like mice. They are not taking the city because they don’t have to.”

Vorontsov mulls this over and says tentatively, “I could use my standing orders or . . . I could call President Yeltsin.” Then, as if arguing with himself in public, he makes it clear that he does not want to phone his president: “It’s now 4 o’clock in the morning in Moscow, which coincides with the Orthodox Easter Sunday. What a present! I plead with you. Let’s wait.”

“Yuli,” Arria says, “we would appreciate it greatly if you would call President Yeltsin now.”

“Well, could I have a half hour?”

“Of course, Yuli. You can take more time if you wish. You have our respect and our appreciation.”

Half an hour later, Arria goes into the men’s room and encounters Vorontsov. The Russian smiles. He has spoken with Yeltsin. “There’s no more problem,” he says.

Arria then finds French Ambassador Merimee, British Ambassador David Hannay and U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. “Vorontsov looks happy,” Arria tells them. “I think the good news is coming.”

When the 15 ambassadors of the Security Council assemble in their nondescript, Spartan consultation room, where the hard decisions of the United Nations are usually made, Vorontsov announces that, although his government still believes that the campaign for sanctions is too hasty, he will abstain rather than veto, allowing the Security Council to impose draconian economic sanctions on Serbia. Although these sanctions will later fail to turn back the tide in Bosnia, they are intended to show that there is a limit to what the outside world will tolerate in the former Yugoslavia. The sanctions will be the strongest signal of that resolve until summer, when NATO, at the urging of the Clinton Administration, threatens to bomb Serbian positions.

Now that everything has been settled in private, the ambassadors enter the commodious and pretentious Security Council chamber to stage an anticlimactic formal session. While cameras and stenographers record the proceedings, the ambassadors pass the sanctions resolution by a vote of 13 to 0, with Russia and China (as it usually does) abstaining. The ambassadors explain their positions in brief, boring statements before nearly empty public galleries.

Vorontsov’s announcement closes the chapter on another Security Council crisis, yet not a single word of the argument, the cajoling, the suspense, the relief of those hours ever appears in a U.N. transcript. Like almost all the business of the U.N. Security Council these days, the debate has taken place in secret.

It is a superb irony. When the Security Council did little, it did so amid great drama. Now that it does a great deal, it does so behind closed doors.

THE OFFICIAL CHAMBER OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL, A BRIGHT HALL SOFTENED somewhat by brown draperies and dominated by a lackluster Norwegian mural extolling peace and freedom, served often in the past as a forum for dramatic public debate. More than a few of those moments now spice history textbooks.

In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, for example, American Ambassador Adlai Stevenson turned on Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin and demanded, “All right, sir, let me ask you one simple question: do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Do not wait for the interpretation. Yes or no?”

This undiplomatic demand for a swift reply triggered a wave of laughter in the council chamber. But, though he understood English, Zorin waited for the translation into Russian on his earphones. “I am not in an American court of law,” he replied in Russian, “and therefore do not wish to answer a question put to me in the manner of a prosecuting counsel. You will receive the answer in due course in my capacity as representative of the Soviet Union . . . .”

“I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that is your decision,” Stevenson said. “I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room.”

Despite such high moments of drama, the Security Council was little more than a backdrop to propaganda during the Cuban missile crisis. Now that the Cold War is over and the Security Council is no longer paralyzed by the vetoes of the United States and the Soviet Union, now that the Security Council has most of the power, authority and influence that the founders of the United Nations dreamed of at the end of World War II, it plays a significant role but one that is shielded by extraordinary secretiveness. The world has only the faintest notion these days about its deliberations, decision-making and powerful personalities.

At a time when the United Nations has become, in the words of Madeleine Albright, “the global 911 number,” it is the council that fields calls of distress. In the last three years alone, the council, with full American support, has authorized the Persian Gulf War, attempted to cope with Bosnia, managed elections in Cambodia, supervised the peace in El Salvador, opened a sorely needed though troubled drive for disarmament in Somalia and continued to patrol cease-fire lines in the Middle East, Cyprus and other areas of tension. It has sometimes fumbled badly and never triumphed wholly. But the council has transformed itself into a dashing and influential player on the world scene.

Charged by the U.N. Charter with “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,” it has 15 members, including the five permanent members with veto powers: the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. This privilege stems from their status in 1945 as the victors of World War II.

The 10 other members of the council are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. Since this is the only chance that many ambassadors will ever have to count in international politics, governments campaign breathlessly for these spots. Many want to become players on the world scene. But not all. It is widely assumed that Morocco, which joined the council in 1992, has a limited aim: to make sure that the nationalists of Western Sahara fail to win independence from Morocco in a yet-to-be-scheduled referendum that the United Nations is supposed to supervise sometime in the next few years.

Luckily for Morocco, Ambassador Ahmed Snoussi, a subtle, veteran diplomat, was president of the Security Council last February when an Israeli issue erupted. After closed-door sessions with the Israeli ambassador and the members of the council, Snoussi announced a compromise: Israel would accept the U.N. demand that it allow the return of 400 deported Palestinians from southern Lebanon, but Israel could delay a year before letting them all come back. Since the compromise had the imprimatur of the ambassador from a Muslim state, it was hard to discredit. Clinton Administration officials, who wanted the issue of the deportees off the Security Council agenda, were obviously relieved. They owed Snoussi a big favor.

When Snoussi announced the compromise, I told a French diplomat: “Well, there goes any hope for Western Sahara’s independence.” The diplomat, who had served in Morocco, laughed. “I see you understand both North Africa and the Security Council,” he said.

Aside from Morocco, the current non-permanent members are Japan, Venezuela, Cape Verde and Hungary, whose terms expire at the end of this year, and Spain, Pakistan, New Zealand, Brazil and Djibouti, whose terms expire at the end of 1994.

The second division of official U.N. structure is the General Assembly, which elects the non-permanent members to the council but has little else to do but approve budgets and produce torrents of windbag oratory. The 169 ambassadors who are not on the council wait in the corridors, like the press and everyone else, for bits of news about what the council is up to.

The third leg is the secretary general’s office. The current occupant, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a fiercely independent Egyptian, has increased his personal muscle as the Security Council entrusts more and more peacekeeping and peace-enforcing assignments to him and his staff. The ambassadors usually refrain from acting on a problem until Boutros-Ghali has prepared a detailed report on the issue with recommendations. Yet the secretary general, to the annoyance of some ambassadors, finds private consultations with them boring and time-wasting. He rarely attends these closed sessions but sends a representative instead, Chinmaya Gharekhan, the former ambassador of India. Nevertheless, he takes his orders from the Security Council.

The council breaks down into four natural caucus groups, which are known as the P3, the P5, the nonaligned, and the non-nonaligned. The P3 (for permanent three) are the Western permanent members--the United States, Britain and France--while the P5 is the P3 plus Russia and China.

The countries that still call themselves “nonaligned” are in a cultural lag. During the Cold War, the Nonaligned Movement arose as a neutral alternative to the American-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Now, while the movement tries to define itself anew, its members on the council--Venezuela, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Morocco and Pakistan--act as a kind of moral force rallying powerful governments against what the nonaligned see as evil and injustice. In an impassioned speech about Bosnia, for example, Ambassador Arria lectured the council in public in August, “I trust that tomorrow when contemplating the devastation of the remains of what used to be a beautiful country . . . we will not have to be reminded of Shakespeare’s lament in ‘Henry V’: ‘Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame.’ ”

The other members of the council--Japan, Hungary, Spain, New Zealand and Brazil--are known as the non-nonaligned, since they have no real community of interest. They caucus rarely and usually make their views known only when all 15 members of the council meet in private consultations.

The consultation room, built in the 1970s, is an austere, midget version of the Security Council chambers with a narrow horseshoe-shaped table. There are enough brown leather chairs alongside the table for the 15 ambassadors and the secretary general, and another 55 blue chairs behind the table for two aides from each country and U.N. officials who supply information needed by the ambassadors. Extra aides must stand. There are no paintings, tapestries or sculptures, only a utilitarian wall clock.

With so many diplomats and officials and interpreters at the private consultations, the proceedings cannot really be super-secret. “I would call it a relative secret,” says Juan Antonio Yanez-Barnuevo, the Spanish ambassador. Some sessions are more secret than others. During the election for a new secretary general in 1991, the ambassadors asked all the interpreters and U.N. officials to leave the consulting room. Working in English, with Belgian Ambassador Paul Noterdaeme translating into French for those few having trouble, the Security Council held trial votes for several weeks and finally elected Boutros-Ghali.

Yet it is hardly democratic for an elite group of 15 ambassadors to set policy for the world, even in relative secrecy.

“We should have more transparency,” says a non-European ambassador on the council. “When we discuss peacekeeping in private, for example, we are keeping out many countries like Canada that contribute large numbers of troops to peacekeeping. I once suggested that the major donors of troops sit in on one of our peacekeeping discussions, but everyone said, ‘Oh, no.’ ” Opening the council to the public, or even other diplomats, contradicts the prevailing wisdom. Most members believe that a transparent Security Council would become a posturing, speechifying council, prolix and impotent.

AMBASSADORS REMEMBER TALL, BALD THOMAS R. PICKERING AS A DIPLOMAT in perpetual motion, an amiable magician, wheeling, dealing. His right hand seemed to dip constantly into his pocket to pull out one substitute resolution after another. Every few minutes, he would snap open a cellular phone to whisper at Washington. He was a master, the star of the council.

Now ambassador to Russia, Pickering dominated the Security Council during the first three years of the Bush Administration in a way that no American ambassador, not even Adlai Stevenson, had ever done before. A career diplomat with wide experience in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America and a master of numerous languages, including Swahili, Pickering evoked an awe that is almost unreal. U.N. diplomats still compete in conjuring up superlatives to describe him.

To a surprising degree, most ambassadors maintain that, although the Security Council is a forum of sovereign governments, personalities matter. The most striking evidence for this is the way the United States lost leadership of the council when it replaced Pickering in 1992.

He never tried to ram an American resolution through the council. “He knew how to negotiate with the members so that they would feel part of the process,” says a French diplomat. “He might change a word here, a word there, nothing substantive, but it would enable a delegate to save face. He also had so much experience in the Third World that he knew how to be sensitive to Third World feelings. That is very important. When you have a country like the United States that is preeminent to the others, the others do not like to feel this.”

Pickering showed flexibility even though he needed State Department approval for any change made in an American-sponsored resolution. The U.S. mission to the United Nations is “an instructed post” in the State Department jargon--Washington dictates most of the words and moves. Continually talking with State on his cellular phone, Pickering would in fact negotiate with his superiors by trying to convey the mood of the council to them.

“His strength came from his ability to tell Washington what can and cannot be done,” says an American diplomat. “Pickering might negotiate a change with the Moroccan ambassador. Then he would phone Washington and say that Morocco would come aboard only if the State Department agreed to the change. Washington would then say OK. It’s a game that U.N. ambassadors play.”

Throughout much of the Persian Gulf War, when Britain proved the staunchest ally of the United States, Pickering would introduce resolutions jointly with British Ambassador Hannay. “During the Gulf War,” says the American diplomat, “Hannay and Pickering would pull off a Fritz and Hans act, you know, the Katzenjammer Kids. Pickering might let Hannay start presenting the resolution and then pick it up himself, or it might be the other way round.”

But Pickering’s acclaim irritated Secretary of State James A. Baker III and his close aides. They resented his penchant for getting things done without following the exact route set down by the State Department, what Assistant Secretary of State John R. Bolton once complained of as getting from A to D without passing through B and C. In early 1992, the Bush Administration decided to move Pickering out of the United Nations.

President Bush named another foreign service officer, Edward J. Perkins, to his place. The first black to serve as American ambassador to South Africa, Perkins is an inward, soft-spoken, slowly paced diplomat who did well in the quiet and delicate intricacies of racially cursed Pretoria but failed in the kinetic excitement of New York. From Secretary Baker’s point of view, however, Perkins was not a failure. He never said anything unless it was cleared first in Washington. He avoided reporters and the limelight of television. His occasional lunchtime speeches hung heavily in torpor over dessert. But the United States lost its leadership of the Security Council under him.

Sir David Hannay, the urbane and talented British ambassador, a master of the nuances of diplomatic maneuver, took over the leadership by default. A balding man with cherubic apple cheeks, Hannay, who began his career as an expert in the Persian language, established himself as the best-known U.N. face on American television as he patiently explained, with his patented formula of wit and pedantry, the thrusts and byways of Security Council policies.

To some aficionados of British television reruns, his face may have seemed doubly familiar, for he resembles in both looks and manner the disdainful, officious, manipulative British civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby in the BBC series “Yes, Prime Minister.” The British satirical magazine Private Eye, in fact, refers to Hannay as “Sir Humphrey-sound-alike.” Sir David himself has long accepted the comparison. “Even my mother-in-law insists that I look like Sir Humphrey Appleby,” he says.

Although he clearly enjoys parrying with the press, Hannay treats reporters with a heavy dose of arrogance. Asked recently if he agreed with the nonaligned ambassadors that there was a sense of drift in the Security Council over Bosnia, Hannay replied somewhat haughtily,”Your characterization of the nonaligned position is not one I recognize. I am going in now to hear what they say. So I do not need to answer your question.” Yet reporters still flock around the Briton when he steps out of the Security Council, for they know he will explain and defend its actions.

“Hannay treats the other ambassadors just the way he treats reporters,” says a European ambassador on the council, more bemused than complaining. Hannay does not declaim insults across the consultation room but instead focuses withering looks when his patience runs out. “David Hannay,” says an American diplomat who prizes him highly, “has all the arrogance of an Eton headmaster addressing students from Yorkshire.”

The new face on the scene is Madeleine Albright, and U.N. diplomats kept peppering reporters with questions about her before she showed up as President Clinton’s envoy in February. Some reporters, who knew her from her stint as foreign-policy adviser for candidates Michael S. Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992, recalled her as warm, articulate and smart, a woman who liked to slip her eyeglasses up on her blond hair and charm interlocutors with a vivacious smile. She was a Georgetown University international relations professor, Czech-born, and she had close contacts with East European political figures like Czech President Vaclav Havel long before taking up her U.N. post. But she was largely unknown to U.N. diplomats. Would she have the gumption and authority to wrest control of the Security Council back from Hannay and reassert American leadership of the council?

“No country except the United States is able to exercise leadership on the council,” says a European ambassador. “To some extent, the Europeans can provide a sort of ersatz leadership, and we are attempting to do it. But it’s not the same thing.”

But most ambassadors who hoped that Albright would take charge of the Security Council have been disappointed. The only woman among them, she does not take a spirited part in debate, does not chat openly with them before a meeting and does not attend as many sessions as Pickering did. Some say she delays discussion by her continual need to consult with Washington.

She applies pressures for U.S. resolutions only sporadically. There have been cases where she has taken a position alongside the nonaligned but made no attempt to bring others of the Big Five with her. “Having the United States on your side is sometimes no better than having Djibouti on your side,” laments one nonaligned ambassador.

The ambassadors insist that Albright is a perceptive scholar and pleasant colleague. But they believe she has been crippled by Bosnia--the main issue before the council this year--and the failure of the Clinton Administration to come up with a coherent and consistent policy on what to do about it.

“You cannot control the Security Council without policies,” says an African ambassador on the council. “To control you must have bearings. You must know where you want to go. It is not Madame Albright’s fault. The problem is in Washington.”

When Bosnia finally slips off the council’s agenda, the ambassadors may find that Albright is a formidable diplomat even though she operates much differently from Pickering. She does not squeeze elbows and touch shoulders, but she understands that the Security Council is a collegial body. When Ambassador Arria criticized an American position recently, she slipped him a note. “No matter what, Diego,” she wrote, “our friendship is still secure.” The note buoyed his spirits for the rest of the day.

On the wider stage, Albright, a more polished TV performer than Secretary of State Warren Christopher, has been making well-received speeches lately about a new American foreign policy that she calls “assertive multilateralism.” That seems to mean that the United States intends to play a key role in formulating foreign policy with its allies but does not intend to cram Washington-crafted policy down their throats. Albright often describes herself as “a political animal who believes in consensus and coalition-building,” and she envisions herself leading the council by forging coalitions and consensus. “Assertive multilateralism,” she says, “is not a phony phrase.”

But some conservative critics, led by Ronald Reagan’s U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, claim that the Clinton Administration is too dependent on the United Nations, abdicating its world leadership to the secretary general. These criticisms usually paint Boutros-Ghali as a grasping bureaucrat usurping power that rightfully belongs to the United States and other governments.

Such criticism has a hollow, ironic sound to Boutros-Ghali and other U.N. officials. In their view, the United States and other members of the Security Council have exploited and hurt the United Nations in both Somalia and Bosnia. In Somalia, U.N. officials carp, President George Bush sent in more than 20,000 Marines for a half-year but refused to order them to disarm the warlords. This dangerous, messy work was left for a weaker U.N. force that has been bogged down in a hunt for the elusive Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid. In Bosnia, the United States, Britain and France led the Security Council in passing high-minded but toothless resolutions that assuaged public opinion at home but made the United Nations look feeble and helpless in the long run.

The lack of leadership on the Security Council this year enabled Ambassador Arria to assume an unusual role for Venezuela. Powered by a mood of moral outrage, the newspaper-executive/diplomat became the conscience of the council, proposing what most of the other ambassadors knew was right even if they felt constrained from saying so by the realities of international politics.

“Venezuela is often ahead of the Islamic nations in defending the Bosnian Muslims,” says a European ambassador. “Of course, there is a strong dose of quixotism in Spanish-speaking people. To Latins, the idea of defending the most feeble is very noble.”

Arria’s independence and flair, however, depended on support from Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close friend. When a corruption scandal led to Perez’s suspension as president earlier this year and deprived Arria, a political appointee, of any protection, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry ordered Arria home in August and replaced him with a veteran diplomat whom no one expects to replace Arria as the conscience of the Security Council. Even during this age of instantaneous communication, when governments can instruct their ambassadors on any issue at any moment, personalities do make a difference.

“NO TAXATION WITHOUT representation,” says Japanese Ambassador Yoshio Hatano, who speaks fluent English and likes to address American club and society luncheons about the role of Japan in the United Nations. Whenever he does, he begins with America’s Revolutionary War slogan. Japan, with one of the strongest economies in the world, pays the second-largest assessment to the U.N. budget, but unlike the United States, which pays the most, or Britain and France, which pay far less, Japan does not have a permanent seat on the Security Council. But it wants one. Ambassador Hatano is on the council this year only because of Japan’s election to a two-year term.

The cozy little club of the P-5 has held out for half a century with little challenge to the inequities that have since developed. The closest thing to a world government rests on the ashes of World War II, a calamity that only a small percentage of the global population can remember. Both Japan and Germany are hankering to become permanent members of the council, positions denied them for their role in the war. The U.N. Charter, when it refers to “enemy states,” is mainly talking about Germany and Japan. This is a shame that the two countries want erased. The Clinton Administration is sympathetic to their aspirations; both Secretary of State Christopher and Ambassador Albright have announced support for their permanent place on the council.

The most-talked-about date for amending the U.N. Charter is 1995--the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. But the issue of reform raises nettlesome questions about new and old realities. The admission of Germany would add a fourth European country to the permanent members, three of them part of the European Economic Community. That would infuriate other blocs. While it might seem logical to ask Britain or France to give up a seat to Germany, they would refuse in thunderous terms. Nor would they accede to giving up their seats to one or two diplomats who would then represent all 12 members of the EEC. In fact, with their power of veto, Britain and France could block any attempt to give permanent seats to newcomers.

Asked about the German-Japanese campaign, French Ambassador Merimee says, “My people in Paris say they want to preserve the efficiency of the Security Council.” His reply is not as disingenuous as it sounds. Admission of Japan and Germany would surely open the door to demands from other countries for a seat on the council. Regional powers like Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India and Pakistan are obvious candidates.

Many diplomats fear that opening the permanent membership to Japan and Germany would open a Pandora’s box that would create a council of 20 members, perhaps more. That might make the Security Council unmanageable, even for a Tom Pickering.

Even now, the non-permanent ambassadors find it difficult to give up their seats after only two years. They have dealt aggressively with Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq and Haiti and may never get the opportunity to play on the world stage again. It is a seductive and swift two years.

Even before his removal, Ambassador Arria felt wistful as he contemplated life outside the Security Council. If he had not been recalled, he still would have had to give up his seat at the end of the year. The secrets of the Security Council would no longer be his. A Venezuelan military attache told Arria recently that he was so tired of standing during the Security Council’s private consultations that he was not going to any more of them.

“I told him,” Arria recalls, “that if only they would let me stand next year, I would come every time.”