Sergio de Mello's death robs the international community of one of its best, writes Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
The evening before he set out to start his new assignment in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello sent me a hand- delivered note to wish me well in my new assignment in Dublin and added, in his own hand, that he hoped he would be able to visit Ireland soon to catch up on our chat on international issues.
Sergio had taken over from Mary Robinson as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights less than one year earlier. He had assisted at his first Human Rights Commission and was enthusiastically getting in to his new job and bringing his own mark to it. Then he was asked by the Secretary General to become the United Nations representative in Iraq.
Sergio had suggested a two-month period. Others said six months. As a compromise, he went for four months, but none knew better than he that it was not a four-month job. Diplomats speculated when he might really return to his duties in Geneva: nobody thought it would end so tragically.
Sergio de Mello was an example of what is best in international public service. He summed up in his person and in his work those qualities of excellence which the enemies of the United Nations refuse even to imagine could belong to the organisation.
He was highly efficient and yet thoughtful. He was an extraordinarily hard worker and an enjoyable friend. He was an idealist, who had spent a great part of his life working at the UN High Commission for Refugees, and yet no one was more of a realist. Like any good insider, he knew what worked and did not work in the UN system. He represented very much what was best in it and he never gave up hope that that side would triumph.
He was a professional to his fingertips. He moved in his speeches easily from English, to French to Spanish. He always greeted me in Italian, since he had done part of his schooling in Rome, as the son of a Brazilian diplomat.
He was very much a United Nations man. His friendship with the Secretary General Kofi Annan goes way back to the years when both worked, as young men, in Geneva. The Secretary General must be personally shattered at the loss of a trusted friend.
It is well known that de Mello was the first choice of the United States for UN representative in Iraq. But he was not in the pocket of any nation. His unambiguous comments on the human rights situation of the prisoners in Guantanamo made that clear. He knew that his position in Iraq would not give him the space that he had as administrator for the United Nations in Kosovo or in East Timor. But he was never one to resist a challenging assignment to fight for international legality.
I find it sad to think that this man who spent most of his life working to ensure protection for victims of conflict should have had to face his own death alone before assistance could reach him.
We owe it to Sergio Vieira de Mello to ensure that the mission of the United Nations is not left alone. It is too easy for the member-states, and all of us who make up the international community, to leave the challenge of winning the peace to Sergio and those other dedicated and poorly protected international public servants killed in Baghdad.
• Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Coadjutor Archbishop of Dublin, was until recently the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations Office at Geneva