Ismat Kittani, 71; Head of U.N. General Assembly in the 1980s
Ismat Kittani, 71, who grew up barefooted in a Kurdish village in western Iraq and became an Iraqi diplomat who served as president of the United Nations General Assembly in the 1980s, died of cancer Tuesday in New York.
Kittani, who served five U.N. secretaries-general, worked briefly as a high school teacher in Iraq before joining the foreign service in 1952.
He served as Iraq’s U.N. envoy in Geneva from 1961 to 1964, undersecretary in the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1980 to 1985, and as Iraq’s U.N. ambassador in New York from 1985 until his retirement from the diplomatic service in 1989.
Kittani, who was president of the 36th General Assembly from 1981 to 1982, served as a consultant to Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar from 1989 to 1991. He was then appointed by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali as special representative for Somalia and recently served as an advisor to current Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
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