Former United Nations
Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan has
died at the age of 80, his foundation said on Saturday.
Annan, a Ghanaian national, died in hospital in Bern,
Switzerland, in the early hours of Saturday, two of his close
associates said.
In Geneva, the Kofi Annan Foundation announced his peaceful
death with "immense sadness" after a short illness, saying he
was surrounded in his last days by his second wife Nane and
children Ama, Kojo and Nina.
Annan served two terms as U.N. Secretary-General in New York
from 1997-2006 and retired in Geneva and later lived in a Swiss
village in the nearby countryside.
"In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations. He rose
through the ranks to lead the organization into the new
millennium with matchless dignity and determination," U.N.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whom Annan had chosen to
head the U.N. refugee agency, said in a statement.
As head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, Annan was
criticised for the world body's failure to halt the genocide in
Rwanda in the 1990s.
As U.N. boss he was linked to peace efforts to reunite the
divided island of Cyprus. He submitted a reunification blueprint
for Cyprus which was rejected in a referendum by Greek Cypriots
in 2004.
"The U.N. can be improved, it is not perfect but if it
didn't exist you would have to create it," he told the BBC's
Hard Talk during an interview for his 80th birthday last April,
recorded at the Geneva Graduate Institute where he had studied.
"I am a stubborn optimist, I was born an optimist and will
remain an optimist," Annan added.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad
al-Hussein, paid tribute to Annan as "humanity’s best example,
the epitome, of human decency and grace".
Zeid, who has criticised major powers and other countries
during his four-year term that ends later this month, said that
whenever he felt "isolated and alone politically", he would go
for long walks with Annan in Geneva.
"When I told him once how everyone was grumbling about me,
he looked at me — like a father would look at a son — and said
sternly: "You’re doing the right thing, let them grumble." Then
he grinned!