Egyptian Wins Tops U.N. Slot, Raising Concern Among Jews

The selection of Boutros Boutros Ghali to be the next U.N. Secretary-General has led to expressions of concern from Jewish officials.

Ghali will be the first Arab to assume the post, if, as expected, his vote of confidence Thursday night in the Security Council is ratified in the General Assembly.

In addition to concern that the Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs may have difficulties playing an impartial role in mediating the Arab-Israeli dispute, the Jewish observers take strong exception to his lead role in opposing repeal of U.N. resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism.

And the fact that he is a member of Egypt’s Christian Coptic sect, and that his wife was born Jewish, has been interpreted by some as giving him even more incentive to demonstrate his committment to the Arab line.

“The test will come in whether he will support the repeal,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

“He ought to proclaim, as did Javier Perez de Cuellar, his intent to support the effort to repeal,” said Hoenlein.

Perez De Cuellar will conclude his second five-year term as secretary-general Dec. 31, having chosen not to seek reelection.

Ghali was born in 1922 to a family with a strong tradition of government service. He earned a law degree at Cairo University and was a Fulbright fellow at Columbia.

He met his wife Leah Nadlar, the daughter of Romanian Jews, while earning a doctorate in international law in Paris. She later converted to Christianity.

Ghali taught international law at Cairo University for 30 years, heading its political science department when he was tapped by Anwar Sadat to join the Egyptian cabinet in 1977.

Three weeks later, Ghali accompanied Sadat on his flight to Jerusalem.

Before that visit, Ghali did some research on Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, with whom he knew he would be spending time. Dayan’s interest in archaeology was legend, and Ghali brushed up on the field to make small talk.

As recounted in a recent profile of Ghali in the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, the Egyptian minister waited for Dayan to start the conversation during the ride from the airport.

Finally, Ghali began. “I understand we have a common interest,” he said.

“Yes, I know that hobby very well,” replied Dayan. “We both have blonde, Jewish wives.”

After the visit, Ghali remained intimately involved in the peace process, through the Camp David talks and the signing of the peace treaty.

And it is Ghali who is credited with coning the phrase “cold peace” to describe Egypt’s relations with Israel, which, since the outbreak of the Lebanon war in 1982, never reached the level of full normalization called for at Camp David.

Ghali has kept the Palestinian problem high on his public agenda with the Israelis, leading some in Jerusalem to dub him “the bad man,” even as this year he hosted Likud Foreign Minister David Levy and a coterie of junior Likud Knesset members.

But Egypt’s fundamentalist, and anti-Israel, opposition press likes him less.

“In the office of the U.N. Secretary-General your loyalties and obligations to your homeland vanish,” he assured Yediot. “And on the Israeli issue, it’s definitely possible that I can improve the ties between Israel and the U.N. From my position the past 14 years, I recognize well the problem of the Middle East.”

Ghali’s role at Camp David puts him at odds with past U.N. sentiment; the General Assembly has condemned the Egyptian-Israeli accords.

In remains to be seen how the presence of an Egyptian secretary-general — together with a Saudi in the more ceremonial role of president of the General Assembly — will affect the U.N.’s response to the current peace process, in which both countries are playing an active role.

And there will be an awareness that it was Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, acting at the request of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who withdrew U.N. observers from the Straits of Tiran in May 1967, creating the atmosphere of hostilities that led to the Six-Day War. As Secretary-General, Ghali would be responsible for U.N. forces in Lebanon and on the Syrian border.

“The election places a great responsibility on Egypt to demonstrate that it will adopt an even-handed policy toward the Mideast,” said Harris Schoenberg, director of U.N. affairs for B’nai B’rith International.