In Sergio Vieira de Mello, the senior UN official who died after one of the two massive bomb attacks (AFP) that dominate today's headlines, the world body has lost one of its finest men and the whole planet a noble soul in the quest for peace and human rights.
"C'était vraiment un chic type!" journalist Sonia B., who knew the man in Bosnia, told me this morning; a really fine guy who "spent less time with his UN colleagues than out on the streets with the people" who bore the brunt of the siege of Sarajevo.
"De Mello was a pragmatist, not a man for the institutions," my colleague and friend added. "He didn't bullshit we journalists and it was people he cared about, the ordinary people. He saved lives in a Christian way. A truly Christian way, I mean, discreetly, without the least fuss about it.
"When [late French former president François] Mitterrand came to Sarajevo [in June 1992], there was applause. When De Mello left Sarajevo, many people were weeping."

Yesterday, I struck up a friendship with Philippe, who knew many parts of Africa, India and Afghanistan that I've been to after a long civil service career under successive French governments in fields ranging from defence and intelligence to humanitarian cooperation.
Philippe has been on mission to some of these countries alongside staff from a range of UN organisations, developing considerable respect for the people who keep the United Nations going despite its flaws, the more idle appointees and the weight of a bureaucracy which comes with the juggling of a myriad members and opposing policies.

Neither of us mentioned the late UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, because we didn't know that he was pinioned under rubble after the Baghdad blast that was to claim his life, along with at least 23 others, while more than 100 people were injured.
"He asked for a glass of water before he died," Sonia said. "It was atrocious."
She can be a tough nut when she needs to, Sonia. Not only has she covered the Balkan conflicts, she comes from that region. But De Mello's death still shook her to tears.

The Brazilian was a "doer", efficient in an office but often happier out of one. His predecessor in one of the toughest jobs in the UN, Mary Robinson, said on BBC radio that he was a field man to the core, ideally suited to the task of UN special representative in Iraq.
The BBC will no doubt be updating its brief background piece on the UN's work behind the scenes in Iraq.
In Africa, De Mello won respect — though often with one hand tied behind his back for lack of funds, international commitment and the bloody-mindedness of the "local players" — as a coordinator in the tormented Great Lakes region, seeking to restore a semblance of order and keep humanitarian assistance functioning after the Rwandan genocide and with the war in Democratic Republic of Congo.
He went on to play a key role in helping steer East Timor to independence and — ah! buzzphrase of the new century, "good governance" — by former "terrorists" four years ago.
That BBC story says

"there was no obvious participation on [De Mello's] part in the formation of the new governing council for Iraq, which was billed as one of the key steps in the country's move away from an autocratic regime to a democracy."

But every journalist who knew or has written about the gifted diplomat will read that "no obvious participation" for the semi diplo-speak it is. Moreover, the United Nations — its senior staff, not the Security Council — has done its best to keep a distance, particularly "on the record", from any plans drawn up by those who engaged in what a large part of the world still considers an illegal, unjustified war, whether it ended Saddam's barbaric regime or not.
Realpolitik is complex. De Mello, an immensely patient man, will have had strong opinions about who is rightfully and indeed legally entitled to run Iraq. There's no doubt he will have made those views known, through channels whose tortuous workings he mastered, to its current overlords, particularly the United States.