Boutros-Ghali Outclassed Albright, Clinton & Helms
Boutros Boutros-Ghali was not one for political correctness. Despite his urbane diplomatic ways he found it difficult to dissemble least of all when confronted with what one might call unwarranted arrogance or even common stupidity. Not exactly modest himself, at least he had a strong intellect to match his aristocratic pride. From one of the patrician families, he ended up in the party founded by Nasser, but when confronted with contumely because of his grandparent, the original Boutros Ghali, a prime minister had been assassinated by nationalists, he hyphenated the name and made it his own surname in place of Ghali.
He recalled to me once that while his grandfather had to wrestle with actual British power in Cairo, his grandfather's appointment had to be ratified by a firman from the Ottoman Court in Constantinople since Egypt had passed from practical independence to British neocolonialism while still being officially bound to the Sultan. A background in such arcanae was good preparation for the UN. When he was attacked for saying that the keystone resolution, 242, on the Middle East was not a binding Security Council Resolution, it gave rise to the epithet Boo Boo. But as he explained later, 242 in itself is not binding, but 338 which invokes Chapter VII of the UN Charter and 242, did make it so.
A Coptic Christian with a Jewish wife needed a thick skin in the days of heady nationalism and none more so than when he accompanied Anwar Sadat to negotiate peace with Israel. This was a dangerous era when posturing Arab nationalists were quite prepared to stand for their principles no matter what the cost to the actual Palestinians, not to mention Arab conscripts, would be. They were quite prepared to assassinate those who disagreed. Boutros-Ghali was no starry eyed idealist: he knew that the almost terminally disastrous 1973 attack was what had belatedly converted Israeli leaders to the idea that peace might have its virtues.
Later he would complain that the concomitant parts of the agreement, to attend to the Palestinian part, had been abandoned. The fervent nationalists never forgave him for his part in brokering the peace, and neither Sadat nor Mubarak had the strength to appoint him as actual foreign minister with his Coptic ancestry. When the UN vacancy came up it was almost a godsend for Mubarak in how to rid himself of this worrisome Copt who could be neither fired nor promoted otherwise.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-williams/boutrosghali-outclassed-albright-clinton-helms_b_9257852.html
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