NAME: Sergio Vieria de Mello

AGE: 54

NATIONALITY: Brazilian

CLAIM TO FAME: Slain head of the UN in Iraq

BY any measure, this was not a good week for the US in the Middle East. On Tuesday, two powerful bombs virtually ripped through the American efforts to secure itself a steady supply of oil from the region. However, it was the truck bomb that devastated the UN office in Baghdad and killed its Iraq chief that underlined the troubles ahead for the occupying forces in Iraq.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, UN’s special representative in Iraq, was a career diplomat. As Kofi Anan’s man on the frontlines, he was the UN Secretary General’s first and probably only choice to go to Iraq and take hold of the situation there. The job wasn’t easy for as long as he was there, de Mello was forced to play second fiddle to the occupying British and American forces, a situation that he himself termed as ‘bizarre’. In fact just a month back, he told the Security Council that the "United Nations presence in Iraq remains vulnerable to any who would seek to target our organisation."

He worked tirelessly to bring some sense to the disorder following Saddam’s ouster. And although he played no real part in the formation of Iraq’s new governing council, he did visit Iraq’s neighbours, urging them to give their backing to the institution.

Vieira de Mello joined the UNHCR in 1969. He first served in East Pakistan during the 1971 crises. Thereafter, he devoted his life to dealing with refugee and humanitarian crises. He spent three years as in-charge of UNHCR operations in Mozambique. During the period 1981-83, he served as a senior political advisor to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. He gained widespread praise for overseeing East Timor’s three-year transition to independence after Indonesia withdrew in 1999.

Finally, in September 2002, he was appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a job he had left for only four months in order to serve in Iraq.

Vieria de Mello is by far the highest ranking, non-Iraqi casualty of war. After the late-evening blast in Bagdad, de Mello lay trapped in the rubble. He still had the strength to make a phone call. His security, as said so by the UN Secretary General, was the responsibility of the occupying powers. Which leads us to the question that if the Americans can’t protect even the UN’s top man in Iraq, what can they do other than invade and destroy a country?