Nizar Hamdoon, 59; Iraqi Ambassador to U.S., Then to U.N.

Nizar Hamdoon, 59, Iraq ambassador to the United States from 1984 to 1988 and to the United Nations from 1992 to 1998 under Saddam Hussein, died July 4. He died of pneumonia at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where he was being treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

During Hamdoon’s tenure in the Washington diplomatic corps, Iraq was at war with Iran and had the backing of the U.S.

But by the time he was sent to the United Nations in New York, U.S. policy toward Iran had been reversed because of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Hamdoon tried to halt the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait and began the war.

A son of a cavalry general, Hamdoon was a Sunni Muslim who earned a degree in architecture from Baghdad University.

He was chief of the Iraqi Baath Party’s section in Syria for a while and spent two decades in Hussein’s government.

Between assignments in the U.S., he served as deputy foreign minister, based in Baghdad.

In 1999, he became undersecretary of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, losing his post along with other officials in a government shakeup in 2001. He then went into retirement, citing poor health.