The United States lobbying hard in pursuit of a vital national interest is a fearsome bulldozer for anyone who gets in the way. Now a distinguished victim of such an operation has told his story and it is not pretty. For the then UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the first signal that the US wanted him to go quietly after a five-year term was a message on a small piece of paper from Secretary of State, Warren Christopher. It said: "The administration has decided not in favour of your reelection." Bringing the message to Boutros in his stylish UN residence overlooking New York's East River was his friend Cyrus Vance, a former Secretary of State whom Boutros had asked to sound out Washington about a second term. This was on April 14th, 1996. Eight exhausting months later, Boutros had the overwhelming support of the UN member countries to get a second term but had to admit defeat at the hands of the US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, who vetoed him, having failed to get him to stand down.
At the farewell dinner Boutros asked Albright "Now that you have succeeded in eliminating me and in having your candidate elected in my place, tell me, as a friend, what was the real reason the US waged war against me?" He never got a straight answer as she "barely sipped the excellent 1993 Chateau Margaux Pavillon blanc I had opened in her honour." After she left, Boutros reflected: "She had carried out her campaign with determination, letting pass no opportunity to demolish my authority and tarnish my image, all the while showing a serene face, wearing a friendly smile and repeating expressions of friendship and admiration. I recalled what a Hindu scholar had once said to me: there is no difference between diplomacy and deception."
Boutros, a former Egyptian diplomat, had the bad luck to have his campaign for reelection caught up in President Clinton's own campaign for a second term. Clinton's Republican opponent, Senator Bob Dole, had attacked the President's foreign policy mistakes in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda. Dole blamed these on the US allegedly being ordered around by the UN under the man that Dole referred to contemptuously as "Bootros Boo-tros." Boutros was the first UN Secretary General from an African country and, according to precedent, he would normally get a second term . He had the backing of all the Security Council countries except the US and of virtually all the UN member states, but it was decided in Washington that he must be sacrificed so that Bob Dole would not have a stick to beat Bill Clinton. Boutros would never be told why he must go. When he appealed to Warren Christopher - "as a friend you owe me an answer" - he got nowhere but was offered an extra year, which he turned down.
YET only six months previously, President Clinton had lavished praise on Boutros at celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the UN. He praised his "outstanding leadership," his energy and resolve and "the vision of the United Nations and the world for the next 50 years you have painted for us." When Boutros was battling against what one paper called the "US fatwa" his deputy spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, reminded the UN press corps of the Clinton praise. Ms Albright's spokesman, Jamie Rubin, threatened Fawzi and other UN officials supportive of Boutros with "investigation."
Boutros was no saint himself. He was arrogant, condescending and aloof. When former President Mary Robinson's name began to be mentioned as his successor, he notes that she was "being relentlessly pressed upon the Clinton administration, it was said, by Senator Edward Kennedy." Boutros cites an unnamed UN official as saying that Mrs Robinson's speech to the Foreign Policy Association "could have been lifted from one of Boutros-Ghali's speeches, but she projects an image of the UN that the Americans want to see." Boutros came into his job knowing that it was vital to keep the US happy, but he got a shocked reaction from Albright and Christopher when he asked them: "Please allow me from time to time to differ publicly from US policy . . . this would help dispel the image among so many member states that the UN is just the tool of the US." But "Christopher and Albright looked at each other as though the fish I had served was rotten." Boutros reflects that "It would be some time before I fully realised that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy." He now sees he underestimated Albright. "I was a good boy but I was naive. Fortune is a woman, Machiavelli said, and should be treated roughly, but in this case it was the woman who was rough, and fortune favoured her."
Clearly Boutros is bitter about his treatment by the US and this feeling colours his version of events. But he still gives a credible insider view of how the UN struggled to handle emergency situations in Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda and Bosnia when the member states demanded action but would not allocate adequate resources. And when things went wrong, the UN was as usual the fall guy.
Joe Carroll is Washington Correspondent of The Irish Times