Boutros Boutros-Ghali dies, UN confirm

Boutros-Ghali, who was Egyptian, served one five-year term as secretary-general of the UN from 1992 to 1996.

The UN’s Security Council observed a minute’s silence in his honour today.

As the UN’s first secretary-general from Africa, Boutros-Ghali associated himself with the famine in Somalia and organised the first major UN relief operation there.

He was criticised for the UN’s failure to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and for not pushing hard enough for intervention to end Angola’s civil war in the 1990s.

His style was to wade into crowds and confront protesters when security guards allowed him to, and was jeered in Sarajevo, Mogadishu and Addis Ababa.

“I am used to fundamentalists in Egypt arguing with me,” he once told Reuters.