'He made service look effortless'.

• Author: Tharoor, Shashi
• Position: Heartbeat

The peerless Cyrus Vance will, among his many accomplishments be remembered for his extraordinary efforts on behalf of the United Nations to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia in the first half of the 1990s. I travelled with him to the region in October 1991, when as Special Envoy of Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar he negotiated the arrangements that created the UN peacekeeping operations there.

In addition to the qualities of patience and skill described by so many obituarists, Cy Vance revealed a level of tireless energy that shamed those of us half his age. I remember somewhat ruefully the punishing schedule he set for himself, bounding off a transcontinental flight in the morning straight into a meeting, going through a full day of negotiations without a break (since lunches were also working sessions) and concluding late in the evening with what he called a "hot wash-up", where his staff evaluated the day's progress. He was then invariably up for a 6 a.m. start.

Cy Vance belonged to a generation that served and that made service look effortless, but...