'A risky business....' (former Under-Secretary General for Special Political Affairs, Sir Brian Urquhart) (interview)

Former Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs Sir Brian Urquhart headed the UN peace-keeping effort for 15 years (1971-1986), after being the right hand of his predecessor-Ralph Bunche-for more than 20 years. He served with the British forces throughout World War II. The author of the biography, Hammarskjold and of his own memoir, A Life in Peace and War, Sir Brian was the second person recruited by the United Nations, which he joined in 1945. He is now Scholar-inResidence at the Ford Foundation. He talked to the UN Chronic& shortly after the Nobel Award was announced.

How did peace-keeping get started?

The situation in Palestine in 1948 was very serious. War had broken out immediately after the announcement of the statehood of' Israel on the 14th of May There was a Truce Commission in Jerusalem, which consisted of the consuls of the United States, Belgium and France. Very, soon they discovered that they alone could not monitor the ti-uce and they asked for help. Count Folke Bernadotte became the Mediator and started bringing in officer-observers from those three countries and Sweden to monitor the first truce which was called for by the Security Council in late May.

Originally the observers were a few soldiers and what members of the Secretariat could be spared. A lot of them were civillans carrying out all sorts of functions.

They had no communications, which was extremely dangerous in those days, when even landing an aircraft in Palestine was a risky business unless they'd got some advance word that you were coming. An American, General Stoner, set up the the first ever UN field communications. He had a radio station on Rhodes with links to the observers in the field. That was a very rudimentary business, but at least they could communicate, which was very important.

The principles of" impartiality, the observers not being armed, their being identified as UN, the whole way they would behave was all worked out as they were actually functioning. Nine observers were killed in the first summer.

Ralph Bunche wrote the rules, briefed the observers, and designated where they were to go. He invented the whole thing. And he did it while he was doing all the work of mediation as well, which was an extraordinary performance. Had this type of operation been considered before or was it improvised?

It was improvised. Improvised from scratch. They did not have blue helmets in those days; they only had arm bands. There were a lot of problems about

aircraft security. They finally agreed to paint thcm white with UN written on them. The whole logistics had to be improvised.

The most important thing about the first Palestine operation was that it established as a goal the idea of absolutely impartial observers who reported only the...