Yet, in the short time that he was in Baghdad, Vieira de Mello established a satisfactory relationship with L. Paul Bremer, the top US administrator there, and he told friends he was confident they would definitely be able to work constructively together.
Sergio Vieira de Mello was born on March 15, 1948, in Rio de Janeiro.
He studied in Brazil and France, where he was awarded two doctorates from the University of Paris, becoming fluent in English, French and Spanish as well as Portuguese.
He joined the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva in 1969, becoming assistant high commissioner in 1996.
He served in Bangladesh as it won independence in 1971 and in Cyprus after the 1974 Turkish invasion, where he was lauded for his humanitarian efforts.
He spent three years in charge of refugees in Mozambique during the civil war that followed its independence from Portugal in 1975. He was political advisor to the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon from 1981 to 1983.
The 1990s found him dealing with refugees and other humanitarian problems in Cambodia, in the former Yugoslavia as it broke apart in a series of wars, and in the civil-war torn Great Lakes region of Africa.
RSS