A second world war soldier who set out on quest of peace and helped to create IAEA and UN peacekeeping troops
As the red carpet is rolled out for Barack, the symbolism of diplomacy is much in evidence, but this remains a world where the substance is often in short supply. Brian Urquhart is one whose life is an allegory of international co-operation. Statistically, he shouldn't be alive at all, his scrapes including a non-opening parachute during the second world war and a kidnapping by Congolese rebels. Among the first British paratroopers, in 1944 he cautioned his superiors against the disastrous Operation Market Garden and went on to liberate Bergen-Belsen. At the war's end, this superlative soldier set out on a quest for peace. The second recruit to the United Nations, he helped invent the International Atomic Energy Agency and UN peacekeeping troops, daubing their helmets blue. Later he mediated from Namibia to Kashmir and across the Middle East with what the Jerusalem Post called "an unblemished record for dispassionate compassion". He was the anti-bureaucrat: plain-speaking and even once criticised for keeping too small a staff. After four decades serving the UN he resigned to work on its reform. Today, aged 92, from a small study in Koreatown, Manhattan, Sir Brian writes wisely on world affairs. He is a rare argument for the unity of the virtues and a mark of what the UN could and should be. He says sovereignty needs to be reconciled "with the demands of human survival and decency in the astonishingly dangerous world we have absentmindedly created". Governments should listen.