Ten Years Later
The unresolved issues, while potentially hindering the operation, actually helped the Special Representative to define the mission based on the realities of 1988 - when the operation began - rather than 1978, when the accord was initially drafted. UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, should have become the Special Representative upon signature of the New York Accords on 22 December 1988 but was killed in the Lockerbie bombing of 21 December 1988.
Former UN Commissioner Martti Ahtisaari, who helped draw up the original Settlement Proposal, was therefore recalled from an administrative position at UN Headquarters to serve as Special Representative so as 'to ensure the early independence of Namibia through free and fair elections under the supervision and control of the United Nations'.
Read more about this topic: Settlement Proposal
Famous quotes containing the words ten years, ten and/or years:
“What matters it that man should have a little more knowledge of the universe? If he has it, he gets little higher. Is he not always infinitely removed from the end, and is not the duration of our life equally removed from eternity, even if it lasts ten years longer?”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficient accuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[He said] “Mary, don’t be a fool, nobody’s asked you to speak publicly in seventy years and they’re not going to start now.””
—Mary Boyda (b. 1923)