Global Policy Forum

To some of his fellow diplomats at United Nations headquarters in New York City, there is a sweet irony in the fact that newly named Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, 62, is acting as the intermediary who is seeking a compromise between London and Buenos Aires over the Falklands crisis. The tall, white-haired Peruvian is himself a compromise choice for a job that many doubted he could fill. When China consistently vetoed an unprecedented third term as Secretary-General for Kurt Waldheim and the U.S. would not accept Tanzanian Foreign Minister Salim Ahmed Salim, Pérez de Cuéllar was approved last December to end the bickering and a six-week stalemate.

The Falklands crisis is by far the most serious issue Pérez de Cuéllar has faced, and those who worked with him wondered how he would handle it. He is so self-effacing at times that on at least one occasion he was asked by a guard at the U.N. to produce identification. One of his favorite diplomatic words is caution. His fanaticism for order drives him to rearrange other people's bookshelves. Pérez de Cuéllar was not certain that he would be regarded as an objective mediator by both sides. The Secretary-General and Argentine Deputy Foreign Minister Enrique Ros, with whom he is dealing, were not only fellow South Americans and diplomatic neighbors but longtime personal friends as well. Pérez de Cuéllar told TIME's Louis Halasz: "I thought that perhaps at some stage British public opinion would say, 'This gentleman is from South America and he might tilt toward the Argentines.' But I must say the British government has always given me its full support and expressed its full confidence in me." The British have indeed: reporting to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on his talks, U.N. Ambassador Sir Anthony Parsons described the Secretary-General as being "highly skillful, extremely patient, a very professional career diplomat with special ability in the construction of realistic compromises." U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig also gives Pérez de Cuéllar good marks.

In his quiet way, Pérez de Cuéllar had shown before that he could be an effective go-between. In 1975, while representing Peru in the U.N., he was tapped by Waldheim to try to start talks between Greece and Turkey in the wake of Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus. Pérez de Cuéllar succeeded. He later took on a similar assignment to sort out difficulties between Afghanistan and Pakistan following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Such assignments have made Pérez de Cuéllar an international civil servant who appears to be better known in distant places than he is in Luna. The son of a prosperous businessman, he joined the Foreign Ministry in 1940 to earn money while attending law school, and stayed on. After a series of foreign postings, he became Ambassador to Switzerland in 1964, Peru's first Ambassador to Moscow in 1969 and his nation's chief U.N. delegate two years later. His style is highly personal. Even during his latest crisis, Pérez de Cuéllar manages to walk home for dinner with his second wife. They live in a U.N.-owned mansion on Manhattan's fashionable Sutton Place, less than a mile from the U.N. building. Before dining, Pérez de Cuéllar may have one of the martinis for which he has become famous at the U.N. because of their precision: exactly two drops of vermouth in a frosty glass of pre-chilled gin with no olive, lemon or onion. After dinner he likes to relax with music: "Baroque to Bartók, but not late Bartók."

So far in his distinguished career, Pérez de Cuéllar has had only one significant failure. He resigned from the U.N. last spring, hoping to be named Peru's Ambassador to Brazil, a particularly prestigious job in his nation's foreign service. He lost the post, however, through arcane political maneuvering in the Peruvian congress. Rebuffed, Pérez de Cuéllar returned to the U.N. and—suddenly last week—to world attention.