One-on-one with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Kevin Chappell

West African diplomat gives color and credibility to top position at world peacekeeping Organization

The revving sound continues to reverberate in his head. And even now, Kofi Annan finds it hard to fathom why a gang of motorcycle-mounted photographers chased him through the streets of Florence, Italy, earlier this year. It's not like he was a movie star or a basketball icon--he was "only" the secretary-general of the United Nations on his way to church.

When did career diplomats become a part of the paparazzi's hit list anyway?

Well, they're not. But world heroes are. And although Annan denies that he has become a world hero, the first Black UN chief has become one of the world's most sought-alter personalities.

Since persuading Iraq's Saddam Hussein to agree to a settlement that averted a major international crisis, interest in Annan's position has reached far beyond the handshakes of heads of state. And although the Iraq crisis continues to unfold, he is now known far outside the walls of the palaces, estates, castles and compounds that bound his predecessors.

Today, he is recognized wherever he goes. Mamas and daddies now want his autograph for their children, wives of servicemen want to hug him, grandmas want to kiss him, and--perhaps the most telling sign that his life has changed forever--grade-school students are choosing him as the subject of their current-events reports.

For Annan, it means no more solitary walks in the woods, no more indistinct travels around New York City, no more low-key visits to his West African homeland of Ghana. "Now those days are gone," Annan says resigningly as he sits in his office atop the UN's New York City headquarters. "My life changed when I became secretary-general. And since Iraq, one is easily recognized regardless of where one is...It's a new experience for me."

Annan follows in the footsteps of such Black diplomatic giants as Ralph Bunche, a former Howard University professor who helped organize the UN in 1945 and served as the organization's undersecretary-general. Bunche was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1950 for successfully negotiating a historic truce in the 1949 Arab-Israeli conflict.

Like Bunche, Annan's keen negotiating skills have garnered global praise. Few gave Annan a chance when he left for Iraq in February with hopes of settling a disagreement over the search of eight Iraqi sites for weapons.

Preparing for a U.S.-led military strike, President Bill Clinton had ordered the positioning of warships in the Persian Gulf. Missiles were aimed. Targets locked in. Iraqi women and children had taken shelter, expecting showers of missiles to rain down on them at any moment.

With neither side budging, Annan headed to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein, the world's most criticized dictator. How could Annan--perhaps the most soft-spoken of the six previous secretary-generals--successfully negotiate with a man some considered to be mad?

But while others doubted him, Annan was optimistic. "In all the negotiations, I try to go into it with positive expectations that I'm going to give it my best, and try to come out of it with results that are in the interest of the international community," he says with a calm so cool that it comes across as complete confidence. "In my job, I need to be optimistic, hopeful and persistent. Otherwise, I will lose heart."

After days of negotiations with Hussein's underlings, it was heart that led Annan deep inside Hussein's palace bunker on the bank of the Tigris River, and it was heart that brought him out--three hours after meeting alone with the Iraqi leader--with a signed agreement in hand.

"We have been able to demonstrate that if given the chance the UN can make a difference between peace and war by what we did in Iraq," says Annan, who was praised for his ability to effectively handle the spectrum interests and egos that sabotaged previous negotiations. "Reaching an agreement was important in the sense that it demonstrated that diplomacy, handled carefully, and backed up with fairness and the threat of force, can make a difference. That war would have been devastating for the entire region. So I'm proud of that achievement because it reaffirmed the position of the UN, it reaffirmed the role of diplomacy, and, personally, also gave me a chance to play a role."

In his wildest dreams, Annan never thought he would be playing such a role --leading the UN into the 21st century. He grew up in Ghana in the '50s, during a time when Blacks were struggling for basic human rights. The country had been under British rule for more than a century before protests and demonstrations by Blacks brought about its independence in 1957.

"There was a lot of political activity, and you could feel the political electricity. A lot of important changes were taking place," says Annan, who was raised in a prominent family, his father serving as the governor of the Ashanti Province and hereditary paramount chief of the Fante people. "The students and young people were very much aware and very engaged. We used to debate in schools, talk about the changes, the end of colonialism, what independence meant. I grew up in an atmosphere that was politically aware and active."

Annan experienced the same activist atmosphere when he moved to the United States in 1959 to attend college. Enrolled in Minnesota's Macalester College on a Ford Foundation scholarship, he saw a similar freedom movement unfolding in America. "Blacks here were going through the same things that we had been through," he says. "So I knew what was happening."

He graduated in 1961 with a degree in economics, and received a master's degree in management from MIT in 1972. By then, he had begun his career at the UN, where, outside of a break in the mid-'70s when he went back to Ghana, he has worked for the last three decades. During his 33-year stint at the UN, Annan held positions as personnel director, budget director, comptroller and undersecretary of peacekeeping operations.

As undersecretary, Annan was given high marks for his practical approach to carrying out a number of sensitive diplomatic assignments, including the negotiation of the release of Western hostages in Iraq following that country's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In less than five years, Annan transformed what was a tiny peacekeeping office into a division of the UN that was managing 75,000 troops from more than 70 countries on 19 separate missions.

But even with all of his achievements, succeeding Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali to become secretary-general last year came as a surprise to Annan. "I could never have guessed it. Even joining the UN was an accident. I thought I would stay with the UN for about two years and go back to Ghana and work there," says Annan, whose fluency in English, French and several African languages helped him move up the ranks at the UN. "But I could never have dreamt that I could have become the secretary-general, even though in career terms I had done quite well and moved up. But no staff member, no member of the secretariat had ever become secretary-general, so that was something that was really not in the plans. It happened suddenly and it was a surprise."

When Annan became secretary-general, he and his wife, Nane Lagergren, moved from their middle-class home on New York City's Roosevelt Island to the secretary-general's official residence on posh Sutton Place on the other--and more expensive--side of the Hudson River.

For lunch, Annan is usually whisked away--in a police-escorted armored Mercedes--to his nearby estate home for a quick meal with his wife. On nice days, the couple eats in the garden.

There's a deafening quietness that fills the home, the only noise being the intermingling of her Swedish accent with his West African dialect.

It's just the two of them. It's been that way since their son and two daughters (from previous marriages) grew up and moved out. It's the second marriage for Annan, whose marriage to his first wife, a Nigerian, ended in divorce.

Those close to the couple reportedly say that the two are soul mates. Both love to travel, read, take long walks in the woods, and share other interests. The two usually travel to Ghana every other year. "You miss friends, you miss family," the secretary-general says of his homeland. "Now when I go home, the private moments you spend with them are diminished. You miss that."

Nane Lagergren is a lawyer-turned-artist, and the niece of the late Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, a World War II hero who disappeared in a Soviet prison after saving 20,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazis.

On this day, the two discuss Kofi Annan's work schedule, which typically includes hosting foreign dignitaries, and attending a host of council meetings, special sessions, ceremonies and receptions.

But most days aren't typical. Annan usually finds himself putting out fires, either internally at the UN, or internationally from the seemingly daily conflicts that arise across the world.

From India's nuclear testing to the continued strife between Israel and Palestine, and conflicts in Burundi, Afghanistan, Somalia and Rwanda, Annan and the UN have, and will continue to have, their plates full. "We are trying to resolve quite a few crises around the world," Annan says. "After the Cold War we knew we were going to go through a period of adjustment and destabilization, but the past year has been incredible. The number of crises which has exploded around us has kept the organization extremely busy and also underscored the point that the UN is needed today perhaps more than ever."

Annan's election to a five-year term was spurred largely by the United States' dissatisfaction with Boutros-Ghali. Congress was so upset with the performance of the UN that during the past decade, it has sporadically withheld payment of its yearly dues to the organization.

As UN leader, Annan's first goal has been to attempt to restore credibility to the organization. He has trimmed the UN's staff of 9,000 civil servants working around the world, and re-focused its mission. His goal: Convince the 185-member states that the UN can work. "I think it's gone quite well," he says. "It's been quite a tough period. We have been able to push the reform agenda very aggressively."

Annan hopes betterment of the UN and successful peacekeeping missions, like his negotiations coup in Iraq, will convince the United States to pay its past debt, now totaling about $1.5 billion.

Successful in pumping credibility, life and color into a previously lackluster UN, Annan is looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead, and understands how important his success is to Black people worldwide.

"I know that my position and my role is an inspiration to most of the people on the continent [of Africa] and Black people everywhere," he says. "I'm conscious of the fact that I'm seen as a role model and that what I'm doing is inspiring quite a lot of young people not to put any limitations on their own dreams and on their own ambitions. I'm happy that I'm able to inspire them that way, to really aim high and live their lives to the fullest without any inhibition about what they can do or be allowed to do... Eleanor Roosevelt once said, `No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.' Those are words to live by."

COPYRIGHT 1998 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning