Abstract
If the United Nations was well prepared to seize the opportunities presented to it in 1987 by virtue of changes in Security Council procedure, it was also well prepared in having the correct man in the Secretary-General’s office. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar had just the right amount of experience as well: enough to understand the possibilities and limitations of his office; not so much that he had become jaded and cynical. And in the process he had maintained ‘reasonably good relations with all the main groups and blocs’.1 Interestingly, Mrs Thatcher, not one of the UN’s greatest admirers, is believed to hold him in high regard.2
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Notes
Sydney D. Bailey, The Procedure of the UN Security Council (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) p. 95.
Christopher Thomas, ‘Friend to the World’s Enemies’, The Times, 28 July 1988.
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, ‘The Role of the UN Secretary-General’, in Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury (eds), United Nations, Divided World: The UN’s Roles in International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 76.
Thomas M. Franck, Nation Against Nation: What happened to the U.N. dream and what the U.S. can do about it (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) p. 114.
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, ‘The Role of the United Nations in World Affairs’, International Affairs (Moscow), Oct. 1988, pp. 94–5.
Frederick Lister, ‘Exploiting the Recent Revival of the United Nations’, International Relations, vol. 9, no. 5, May 1989, p. 428.
On the previous role of the CPC, see Evan Luard, The United Nations: How It Works And What It Does (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 1334.
Thomas M. Franck, ‘Soviet Initiatives: U.S. Responses - New Opportunities for Reviving the United Nations System’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 83, no. 3, July 1989, p. 533.
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© 1991 G. R. Berridge
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Berridge, G.R. (1991). The Secretariat under Pérez de Cuéllar. In: Return to the UN. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376052_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376052_2
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