Cairo Magazine - UN-covered

Boutros Boutros-Ghali's meteoric career took him from Egyptian diplomat to international arch-civil servant.

MENA

During a visit to India in 1994, Boutros Boutros-Ghali went to see a fortune-teller. Then-UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali–who at the time had been coming under increasing attack from some UN member nations, most notably the United States–asked her about his chances of winning a second term. The fortune-teller responded that he didn’t have a chance, but that his best days were yet to come.

Her prediction is not backed up by Boutros-Ghali’s recently published diary, Bintizar Badr Al Budour (Awaiting the Fullest Moon), which suggests that the best was already over by then. Nevertheless, it reveals plenty about the life and times of one of Egypt’s most prominent civil servants. The launch of the 600-page memoir, with all its insights into the corridors of power, has attracted considerable media attention.

The account begins on 31 December, 1996, Boutros-Ghali’s last morning in his office on the 38th floor of the UN building in New York, and follows the statesman all the way to a small dinner with old friends in Zamalek on New Year’s Eve 2003. In between, the book relates a series of moments, including celebrations and receptions, disputes and embraces—all in a tone of reserve.

“I chose to hide away before midnight to escape the end of 1996, which was not too good for me,” he wrote as he prepared to vacate his office at the UN. “What strikes me this second is not departing my office, or even a life-style, a place or friends, as much as it is that I—at 74—have to move out again to live under yet another foreign sky, looking out for new responsibilities and in a new strange atmosphere.”

The book, a translation from the original French, was reviewed by Al Masri Al Youm recently in a series of in-depth, full-page articles. Sensational quotes from the work were featured in headlines, highlights and captions by the independent daily, which chose to underline Boutros-Ghali’s ruminations about presidents Al Sadat and Mubarak. For Boutros-Ghali, Al Sadat “was like the hero of a tragic novel: Cairo’s elite mocked him… he left, like the prophet Moses, without seeing the recuperation of the promised land of Sinai.” With regard to Mubarak, Boutros-Ghali complains that the president did not pay much attention to him. “The president is busy with short-term problems [as opposed to] water issues and African problems,” he writes, adding that Mubarak “was more interested in my suits and my tailor.” He also laments that the president did little to back him in his bid for re-election at the UN or at the Francophonie, the association of French-speaking countries that Boutros-Ghali later chaired.

One of the more striking aspects of the book is its glaring lack of self-criticism. Boutros-Ghali has made news in recent months not only domestically, as the chairman of the National Council for Human Rights, but also because of his involvement in the UN oil-for-food scandal, which continues to reveal improprieties in UN monitoring of Iraq’s oil sales. Even the great failure of his tenure at the UN, the failure to act on the Rwandan genocide, goes unmentioned.

The diary entry of 8 April 2002 covers a televised discussion forum that included Boutros-Ghali and the Israeli Ambassador to France. It ends with a telling account of Boutros-Ghali’s guarded attitude towards Egypt. Commenting on the Israeli ambassador’s remark that he does not belong to the ideological camp of Ariel Sharon, Boutros-Ghali writes “I remembered at this moment how difficult it is for someone to represent his government and defend it while not agreeing with the policy it makes. In regard to that, the advocates of moral radicalism will tell me ‘then you will have to quit.’ Maybe, but this means for one to give up his country, right when she is in desperate need of someone to defend her.”