DHAKA: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a history-making diplomat who made his mark as an architect of the Camp David accords and then became the United Nations’ first African secretary-general, has died.

He was 93, reports CNN.

Rafael Ramirez Carreno, Venezuela’s U.N. ambassador and current head of the UN Security Council, announced Boutros-Ghali’s passing Tuesday, after which representatives from the council’s 15 current members stood for a moment of silence.

Egypt’s state-run Ahram Online reported that he died Tuesday in a hospital in the Egyptian city of Giza, where he’d been admitted days earlier after breaking his leg.

Current secretary-general Ban Ki-moon lauded Boutros-Ghali as ‘a memorable leader who rendered invaluable services to world peace and international order’, noting he stepped up during ‘a time when the world increasingly turned to the United Nations for solutions to its problems in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War’.

‘He showed courage in posing difficult questions to the member states, and rightly insisted on the independence of his office and the Secretariat as a whole,’ Ban said.

‘His commitment to the United Nations -- its mission and its staff -- was unmistakable, and the mark he has left on the organization is indelible.’

In many ways, Boutros-Ghali was born into the world of diplomacy, Egyptian politics and all the dangers both of those entail.

His grandfather, Boutros Ghali, served as Egypt’s foreign minister and finance minister before becoming the North African nation's prime minister in 1908. An assassin took his life two years later.

According to his official UN biography, he studied international law, political science and economics at Cairo University, Paris University and New York’s Columbia University (the latter as a Fulbright Scholar).

A committee member at the Arab Socialist Union for three decades, Boutros-Ghali also got involved in politics through Egypt’s National Democratic Party, including winning a seat in Parliament in 1987.

BDST: 1820 HRS, FEB 17, 2016
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