Giandomenico Picco, an Italian diplomat who as a lead negotiator for the United Nations helped resolve conflicts throughout the globe — most notably spending practically a 12 months within the early Nineteen Nineties shuttling across the Middle East to safe the discharge of 11 hostages held by terrorist teams in Lebanon — died on Sunday in Wilton, Conn., north of Norwalk. He was 75.
His son Giacomo stated the reason for his loss of life, at an assisted dwelling dwelling, was issues of Alzheimer’s illness.
Mr. Picco spent 20 years with the U.N., principally in a sequence of loosely outlined roles that positioned him on the heart of a few of the world’s most harmful sizzling spots.
Early in his profession he helped handle the battle between Greece and Turkey over the island of Cyprus; in 1986 he mediated between New Zealand and France after French secret brokers sank the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace ship, within the Auckland harbor; and in 1988 he helped organize the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Tall, sharply dressed and all the time discreet, Mr. Picco was one thing of a thriller throughout the U.N. paperwork. He would disappear with out discover from the headquarters in Manhattan, solely to floor a couple of days later in Lebanon, Iran or Afghanistan, typically with out having handed by border controls alongside the way in which.
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who met Mr. Picco once they each labored in Cyprus and who, after turning into secretary basic in 1981, introduced him on as his private assistant, typically known as Mr. Picco his “chief troubleshooter” and an “unarmed soldier of diplomacy.”
Among the thorniest world crises within the late Eighties was the taking of scores of Western hostages by Hezbollah and different terrorist teams, together with greater than two dozen Americans, typically for years at a time. Mr. Pérez de Cuéllar made it a private mission to free them, and he despatched Mr. Picco to make it occur.
Their leverage was Iran, the sponsor behind teams like Hezbollah, which by 1990 discovered itself at a crossroads. With the top of the Cold War and the loss of life of the nation’s hard-line supreme chief, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the nation appeared open to a rapprochement with the West. Freeing the ultimate hostages held in Lebanon appeared an actual risk.
Mr. Picco later joked that in the course of the early Nineteen Nineties he spent extra time in Tehran than in his native Italy. Over practically a 12 months of negotiations, he would meet first with Iranian officers, then journey to Syria. From there he could be taken in a navy automotive, with curtains throughout the again seat so nobody may see him, over the Lebanese border to fulfill with hostage takers.
He recalled ready for them on an empty Beirut avenue in the midst of the evening.
“The car came to a screeching halt, a bag was put over my head, then I was thrown into the boot of the car, something which I don’t recommend to anybody, especially if you are 6-foot-3 like me,” he informed the BBC in 2013.
He knew the dangers: One of the hostages, an Anglican official named Terry Waite, had been taken captive whereas on the same mission in 1987. Nevertheless, he traveled with out bodyguards and infrequently went into conferences alone.
He made 9 journeys to Lebanon to fulfill with the abductors, every time bringing again a number of hostages, together with Mr. Waite and Terry Anderson, a reporter for The Associated Press who had been held by Hezbollah since 1985.
On Dec. 12, 1991, eight days after Mr. Anderson’s launch, President George H.W. Bush introduced Mr. Picco with the Presidential Award for Exceptional Service.
“His skillful diplomacy with Middle Eastern governments and officials and representatives of the hostage holders has resulted in freedom for many individuals held in the region,” the award quotation learn. “His personal courage in the face of danger and his dedication to the mission represent the best tradition of international civil service.”
Giandomenico Picco was born on Oct. 8, 1948, in Udine, a metropolis in northeastern Italy, not removed from the border with what was then Yugoslavia. His father, Giacomo, was a pharmacist, and his mom, Ares, managed the house.
He acquired a bachelor’s diploma in political science from the University of Padua, in Italy, in 1971, and a grasp’s in worldwide relations from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1972.
He married Elena Carretta in 1973. They later divorced. He married Kate Cooney in 2000; in addition they later divorced. Along together with his son Giacomo, he’s survived by one other son, Liam, and a granddaughter.
Mr. Picco utilized to work on the United Nations on a whim and landed a job on the lowest skilled pay grade, within the Department of Political and Security Council Affairs. Two years later he joined the Office of Special Political Affairs to concentrate on battle decision, a submit that quickly had him on the entrance strains in Cyprus.
By the top of the Seventies he had a popularity as a dependable and reliably low-profile fixer. After Cyprus he labored across the Middle East, together with a multiyear engagement attempting to finish the Iran-Iraq War. It lastly got here to an in depth in 1988.
His mentor, Mr. Pérez de Cuéllar, left the secretary basic’s workplace in 1991, and Mr. Picco knew that his time on the United Nations would more than likely finish as nicely. Though he admired the brand new workplace holder, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, he realized that Mr. Boutros-Ghali had his personal priorities, and his personal workers.
Mr. Picco had yet another mission. There had been two remaining hostages, Thomas Kemptner and Heinrich Struebig, each German assist employees.
He returned to Lebanon, regardless of being informed by an Iranian official that a number of of the terrorists needed him lifeless, a tense dialog he recounted in his 1999 memoir, “Man Without a Gun: One Diplomat’s Secret Struggle to Free the Hostages, Fight Terrorism, and End a War.” In Beirut, he met with officers from Germany, Lebanon and Syria; after a number of days of tense negotiations, the 2 males had been launched.
During the celebrations that adopted, Mr. Picco known as his secretary in New York and requested her to ship a letter he had left on his desk to Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s workplace. It contained his resignation.
He flew with the Germans to Frankfurt, however he declined a suggestion to affix their news convention on the airport tarmac.
“As the attention shifted to them, I slipped out of the plane unnoticed and walked under the aircraft and across the tarmac to a waiting car,” he wrote in his memoir. “Within seconds I was gone.”
Source: www.nytimes.com