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:
“Power lasts ten years; influence not more than a hundred.”
—Korean proverb, quoted in Alan L. Mackay, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977)
“A right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than ten times the men, and ten times the money.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I stir my martinis with the screw,
four-inch and stainless steel,
and think of my hip where it lay
for four years like a darkness.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)