Bernt Carlsson

Bernt Wilmar Carlsson (1938 - December 21, 1988) was Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia from July 1987 until he died on Pan Am Flight 103, which was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D9143EF931A15751C1A96E948260 U.N. Officer on Flight 103 "The New York Times" December 22, 1988] ]

ocial democrat

Bernt Carlsson, born in Stockholm, Sweden, joined the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League when he was sixteen, studied economics at Stockholm University and, upon graduation, went into Sweden's foreign ministry. Carlsson was assistant to the Minister of Commerce in 1967 and, three years later, was assigned to be international secretary of the ruling Social Democratic Party of Sweden in 1970. Concurrent with his position in the party, Prime Minister, Olof Palme (assassinated on February 28, 1986), appointed him as "Special Adviser".

ocialist International

In 1976, he became Secretary-General of Socialist International (SI), based in London, at the same time as former Federal German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, assumed the SI presidency. For the next seven years, Carlsson was engaged in extending the SI's influence beyond Europe to Third World countries, channelling money and political support to the struggle for liberation in Southern Africa. When there was a break-in at his London apartment, Carlsson confided to his Canadian SI colleague Robin V Sears: [cite journal
author = Robin V. Sears
year = 1989
title = Bernt Carlsson: A Very Private Public Servant
journal = Development Dialogue (Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation)
issue = 1989:1
pages = 82–88
id =
url = http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/89_1.pdf ]

"They messed things up and pawed through my papers. Then just to make sure I knew it wasn't a simple burglary they piled my money in the centre of the living-room rug." South African goons were active in London at the time, and some had a bizarre sense of humour. "But don't talk about it, and I'm not going to report it. That would just give the bastards their little victory."

Carlsson also pioneered moves towards Middle East peace using the SI's unique position of having Israel's governing Labour Party as a member, and at the same time retaining very good ties with Arab countries and Yasser Arafat's faction in the PLO. Carlsson developed a particularly close relationship with Arafat's right-hand man, Issam Sartawi, who was murdered (allegedly by the Abu Nidal Organization) during an SI conference in Portugal on April 10, 1983. Earlier in 1983, however, in a dispute about what he perceived as the SI president's authoritarian approach, Carlsson rebuked Brandt saying: "this is a Socialist International — not a German International". Following the April 1983 SI congress in Albufeira, Portugal, which Brandt had contentiously decided to relocate from Sydney, Australia, Brandt retaliated by forcing Carlsson to step down. [cite journal
title = Never at a Loss for Words
journal = TIME
date = 1983-04-18
url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953794-1,00.html
unused_data = |access date = 2008-07-09]

wedish diplomat

Carlsson left London and returned home to Sweden in 1983 and, for two years, became the Prime Minister's special emissary to the Middle East and Africa. Palme entrusted him with an important Middle East role in delicate attempts to negotiate a peace agreement between Iran and Iraq. From 1985 to 1987 he was head of Nordic Affairs in Sweden's foreign ministry.

UN Commissioner for Namibia

On July 1, 1987 Carlsson was appointed an Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the UN Commissioner for Namibia. A year later, he convened a meeting in Stockholm between the SWAPO leadership (Sam Nujoma, Hage Geingob and Hidipo Hamutenya), and a delegation of "whites" from Namibia to discuss developments in the independence process.

Namibia's independence had been expected to take place soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 was agreed in September 1978. However, it took over 10 years for UNSCR 435 to be implemented. The delay was blamed by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens on Chester Crocker's 'procrastination' and on President Ronald Reagan's 'attempt to change the subject to the presence of Cuban forces in Angola' as well as the 'flagrant bias' in America's Namibia policy in favour of apartheid South Africa. Hitchens praised Carlsson's role as a 'neutral mediator' in the process leading to Namibia's independence: [cite book
last = Hitchens
first = Christopher
authorlink = Christopher Hitchens
title = For the sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
publisher = Verso
date = 1993
pages = 99
url = http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1glfCn6cbTIC&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=Bernt+Carlsson+and+Christopher+Hitchens&source=web&ots=LxRgyhXtRx&sig=jIjevLUM8XFHvIHAzKg6kqrZAeM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
isbn = 0-86-091435-6]

An important participant was Bernt Carlsson, UN Commissioner for Namibia, who worked tirelessly for free elections in the colony and tried to isolate the racists diplomatically. Carlsson had been Secretary-General of the Socialist International, and International Secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. He performed innumerable services for movements and individuals from Eastern Europe to Latin America. His death in the mass murder of the passengers on Pan American Flight 103 just before Christmas 1988, and just before the signing of the Namibia accords in New York, is appalling beyond words.

An editorial in "The Guardian" of December 23, 1988 stated:

Two days before Christmas, two tides flow strongly. One - the greater tide - is the tide of peace. More nagging, bloody conflicts have been settled in 1988 than in any year since the end of the Second World War. There are forces for good abroad in the world as seldom before. There is also a tide of evil, a force of destruction. By just one of those ironies which afflict the human condition, peace came to Namibia yesterday. Meanwhile, on a Scottish hillside, the body of the Swedish UN Commissioner for Namibia was one amongst hundreds strewn across square miles of debris: a victim - supposition, but strongly based - of a random terrorist bomb which had blown a 747 to bits at 31,000 feet." [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1378098,00.html One view from a desolate hillside] ]

Ten years were to elapse until the Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev summit of the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union in Moscow (May 29-June 1, 1988), finally secured the implementation of UNSCR 435, which would require South Africa to relinquish its control of Namibia. [ [http://www.klausdierks.com/Chronology/130.htm Namibia's independence process 1988-1990] ]

Conspiracy theory

According to one of the seven unsubstantiated theories promoted by former British diplomat Patrick Haseldine, apartheid South Africa is alleged to have carried out the Lockerbie bombing in an untargeted killing of Carlsson while he was "en route" to sign the New York Accords. However South Africa signed the peace accord, which brought the Angolan Civil War to a close and gave Namibia its independence, the next day anyway. Haseldine started a petition in October 2007 calling for a United Nations Inquiry into South African involvement in the bombing, however the petition failed to secure the required minimum 200 votes to be considered. [cite web|url=http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/UNInquiry/|title=Petition to: support calls for a United Nations Inquiry into the death of UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing|date=October 2007|accessdate=2008-07-06|publisher=10 Downing Street|author=Patrick Haseldine]

Memorial

The Bernt Carlsson Trust – otherwise known as "One World Action" – was founded by Glenys Kinnock on December 21, 1989 (the first anniversary of the Lockerbie air disaster) in memory of Carlsson.

In Windhoek, Namibia a street in the Pionierpark Extension 1 township is named "Bernt Carlsson Road".

References

ee also

*Dag Hammarskjöld
*Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission
*Olof Palme

External links

* [http://www.klausdierks.com/Chronology/130.htm Countdown to PA 103]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20021117165155/http://web.syr.edu/~vpaf103/v_carlsson.html Lost on Flight 103: A Hero to the Wretched of the World]
* [http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/untagFT.htm Namibia's long journey to independence]
* [http://www.oneworldaction.org/indepth/project.jsp?project=218 Bernt Carlsson Trust]
* [http://www.socialistinternational.org Socialist International website]