Yale-UN Oral History 
Jan Eliasson 
James Sutterlin, Interviewer 
November 9, 1999 
New York, N Y 
James Sutterlin: Mr. Eliasson, I want to first thank you very much for agreeing to 
participate in this Yale Oral History devoted to the United Nations. Our purpose today is 
to discuss your role in bringing an end the Iran/Iraq war. And to begin with I would like 
to ask when and in what capacity did you first become involved in the subject and the 
efforts to end the war. 
Jan Eliasson: I was, in 1980, Director of the division for Africa and Asia in the Foreign 
Ministry in Stockholm. I had worked with the Prime Minister before when I had been in 
the United States; I had been in communication with the Prime Minister's office on 
Vietnam, which was a big issue, of course, in European politics, not only Swedish 
politics. Through that issue, and my work at the embassy in Washington, I had 
personally got to know Olof Palme, or at least met him. So there was a personal 
relationship between us. Also, I had the function in the foreign ministry that was most 
closely associated to what was happening between Iran and Iraq. The war broke out in 
September 1980; Olof Palme was asked to be the Special Representative of the Secretary-
General on Iran and Iraq in early November. And November 12, he was called by [Kurt] 
Waldheim and asked whether he would accept this assignment. He accepted it in the 
evening of the 12 t h of November, and the following morning, after consultation on his 
side with the Swedish Foreign Minister - because Palme at that time was leader of the 
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opposition - he asked me whether I would want to assist him in the mediation efforts and 
accompany him that very same day to New York where he was going to meet urgently 
with the Secretary-General and other key personalities. So I accepted that very day, 
packed my bags, and we had a press conference in Stockholm. And off we went, and 
then we spent two days or three days in New York, preparing for the mission. We then 
immediately started the first round of shuttle diplomacy in November 1980 followed by 
two or three shuttles that year, very intense work, getting along mediation efforts. We 
continued also the first half of 1981, also intensely, so altogether, I think, until mid¬
summer 1981, we had four shuttle visits to the area. 
JS: And how would you describe your shuttle visits? Some of the people whom you 
met with are still the same people? 
JE: Of course on the Iraqi side it was exactly the same people you would meet today. 
We spent time with Saddam Hussein, considerable time with Saddam Hussein personally. 
We spent time with Tariq Aziz, but also his predecessor, Hamadi, I think is his name. He 
is now speaker of Parliament, he was Foreign Minister then. Tariq Aziz was there, too I 
recall very strongly. We met also a Vice-Minister, a high official in the foreign ministry 
by the name of Kittani, Ismat Kittani, who is also around but now in completely different 
capacities. Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz were the key people on the Iraqi side. They 
were always saying, bragging almost, during the war, that you would see changes in the 
opinions and power, people in power in Iran, but never in Iraq. It seems to be true, 
although the change probably would occur sometime by natural reasons. 
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Anyway, on the Iranian side, there was quite a turmoil. We met people who were 
later to be assassinated: Rajai, the Prime Minister of Iran. We met Bani Sadr, who was 
leading a more modern tradition, more western-oriented tradition. We could always 
distinguish the Bani Sadr followers from the mullah followers by the Bani Sadr people 
having ties while the others were dressed in a more revolutionary fashion. Actually, Olof 
Palme was joking, saying that we actually had two negotiations, one between Iran and 
Iraq, and one negotiation in Iran between the mullahs and the Bani Sadr camp. The most 
important person we met who then later was assassinated was Ayatollah Beheshti, who 
was extremely powerful, enormously respected, and very strong. We met him, he only 
spoke German as a foreign language, so only I and Olof Palme were allowed to enter his 
room. He closed the door behind us even by a key. Diego Cordovez and a few others 
were rather dissatisfied, waiting outside, and he, Olof Palme, and I were talking in 
German because Ayatollah Beheshti had been a local mullah in Hamburg. 
It turned out to be one of the most interesting conversations. This was in June 
1981, and he actually then both found a solution - which later unfortunately did not 
materialize - to the closed ships in the Shatt al Arab, but also actually lined out a solution 
and accepted the elements that we had developed vaguely on a comprehensive settlement. 
And Olof Palme was more optimistic than I had ever seen him during the work on the 
negotiations after that conversation. Approximately three weeks later, I recall, we 
received the terrible news in Baghdad, actually through international channels, that 
Ayatollah Beheshti had been killed, and the terrorist act was committed by the Mojahedin 
camp against the headquarters of the Islamic party. Seventy-two people were killed at 
one time. So it was on the Iranian side, a varied lot of people that we met. If I look back 
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today at the people we met at that time, I don't think anybody is still left, except of course 
Rafsanjani, who was in different periods, playing different roles. 
JS: Khomeini was not yet there? 
JE: Khomeini was alive. We never asked to see Khomeini, because we were afraid a 
'no' from him would end all negotiation efforts. So we never asked for a meeting a nd no 
meeting was offered either. We met later Khameini but Rafsanjani was probably the 
most influential person that we met, and who of course is still around. Most of the others 
are gone. 
JS: Now in the development of the planning of the so-called comprehensive plan, 
how important were you and Olof Palme in that, or how important was the Secretariat, or 
for that matter Waldheim? 
JE: Well, I think in the beginning we played a very active role. We actually 
developed both a step-by-step approach and a comprehensive approach. We were all the 
time aware of the possibility of either going for a comprehensive solution or a step-by-
step. Comprehensive was to Olof Palme and I, the preferred option. We worked that out 
together with Diego Cordovez, Iqbal Riza, and the team. Raymond Sommereyns was a 
very important one, a lawyer who is still around in the U N . In that comprehensive 
package, we brought in all the elements for a solution, and tragically, what later came out 
in 1987-88, Resolution 588, very closely resembled what we suggested in 1981, or even 
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in the late part of 1980. And it is of course tragic that in the meantime, 700,000 people 
were killed, 2 or 3 million people were refugees, and tremendous material destruction 
took place. So the comprehensive settlement was what we preferred and presented in 
general terms to begin with, and a little more precisely later on. But at the same time, we, 
of course, realized that if there was no progress on the comprehensive solution, we would 
have to accept the step-by-step solution, although the problem with the step-by-step 
solution is the parties have to know where they end if they put the steps in one certain 
direction. But we felt that this could also be a confidence building process, something we 
then developed later in 1983-84. Even in the beginning, we felt that the release of ships 
that were stuck in the Shatt al Arab could be both a local cease-fire and a confidence 
building measure, and the first step in a step-by-step solution. So we actually proceeded 
in parallel with discussions on a comprehensive settlement. 
JS: And that was a success? 
JE: No, it was not a success. There is something in your question that gives me the 
impression that those ships were released. In fact, they were not. 
JS: I thought some were released. 
JE: No, well, maybe a small fraction of them, but in fact seventy-two were stuck 
there, and very few, if any, if I can recall, got out. They were hostages, more or less, and 
we were extremely disappointed that this solution did not come about. We were under 
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tremendous pressure to act, not least by Lloyd's Insurance Company in London, who had 
billions of dollars at stake in those 72 ships. But also it would have been a local cease¬
fire, a very important step. 
Now, it failed for an absolutely ridiculous reason. We discussed in the end of this 
issue who would pay for it. And it turned out that both sides insisted on paying for the 
whole operation. I've never in my life, neither before nor after, been in that position, that 
negotiations fail because both sides insist on paying for the operation. But for both 
parties, this turned out to be symbolic of who had the sovereignty over Shatt al Arab. By 
paying the whole operation, both of them wanted to prove that it was they who had the 
sovereignty over the Shat al Arab. We actually were - I think it was a Saturday morning -
sitting with Bani Sadr, and Bani Sadr brought out his pen to sign on to the agreement that 
we had worked out very carefully. Then he just asked to take a pause and discuss it with 
some experts, and in the afternoon, it was No. Because he had learned about the Iraqi's 
strong insistence on paying for it and then he realized that this would have been used 
against him in a more basic settlement. 
JS: You mentioned Shatt al Arab. Could I just skip ahead and ask you, throughout 
the whole series of endless negotiations, how important did you assess this difference 
between the two countries to be? 
JE: It was not an important issue in substance. It was a symbol of the conflict. The 
reason for the conflict was much more complex. It had to do with the fear of the Iraqi 
side for export of revolution and the hatred that existed on the Iranian side for the way 
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Saddam Hussein had treated Khomeini while he was in Karbala, Iraq. A l l this fuelled the 
mutual suspicion of fear. It was a basic confrontation between two different systems, the 
fear on the Iraqi side that this Shi'a Muslim wave would enter Iraq and throw Saddam 
Hussein's regime over. This, I think, was the real reason behind the conflict. The reason 
on the surface was the Shatt al Arab issue because it became an important issue, it 
became the object of negotiations, and in the end, what we hoped, the place where we 
could save face. But since the real reasons were much deeper, of course, you came to this 
conclusion rather soon, that whatever solution you presented would not be accepted 
unless you dealt with the basic fears and basic suspicions. But it was enormously tragic 
to see that, like two boxers, we advised them to stop the fighting in the fourth round, but 
they continued until the 15 t h when they were two bloody bodies falling over each other. 
And we knew all the time that they would come to this solution in the end, but it took 
war-weariness and eight years of war before they realized that. 
JS: How did you assess the functioning of the Secretariat and the Secretary-General 
in this first period when Waldheim was still the Secretary-General? 
JE: Waldheim was very helpful. Olof Palme and he had a very courteous 
relationship, almost of the old Hapsburg Swedish royal traditions. The choreography was 
very stylish, they showed great respect for each other. Waldheim deferred very much to 
Olof Palme. Every time he came here, and I was with him every time, he organized a 
lunch in his private dining room with his closest advisors. Brian Urquhart, I recall, in 
particular, Diego Cordovez, of course, was closely working with us, and he offered all 
7 
assistance. Olof Palme insisted that I would be his closest advisor outside of Diego 
Cordovez and I was given complete access. In the beginning we worked extremely close 
together, in fact we developed our ideas together during our trips. We were sometimes 
out ten days, fourteen days, we shuttled between Baghdad and Tehran a couple of times. 
So we were working night and day with the issues together, which was a period where it 
was very close coordination. But we were simply forced to work together. 
JS: And Diego Cordovez was there? 
JE: Diego was there and was working loyally with Olof Palme. The problems, of 
course, became more clear when we were not doing the shuttling between 1982 and 1984, 
for two reasons: One, geographic distance. It's not easy when Olof Palme and I were in 
Stockholm and Diego Cordovez was here with access to the Secretary-General personally 
all the time. The second reason, of course, was that Olof Palme in September 1982 was 
elected Prime Minister in Sweden which gave him much more responsibility at home and 
much less time to deal with Iraq and Iran. I was extremely impressed by the time he 
spent on Iran-Iraq while he was in the opposition. I was talking to him practically every 
day for some periods and I became very close to him. His wife later told me that Iran-
Iraq was constantly on his mind, and she told me - I was very touched by that - how close 
we were and how often Olof talked about me and the Secretary-General and Iran-Iraq, 
and "I have to call Jan" and I was very moved by that, especially after the very tragic 
circumstances under which he died. He was assassinated, as you know, on the 28 t h of 
February 1986. So that period between 1982 and 1986 was less contact and perhaps 
8 
more discussion on who did what, but I had the tremendous help of Iqbal Riza, who was 
part of our team from the very beginning, and who is still a very close friend of mine. 
We've been close friends all through the years, and I had always all information, all 
relevant information, coming from Iqbal Riza to me, perhaps not always from Diego 
Cordovez, due to time constraints, or other reasons, but with Iqbal Riza I had absolute 
openness. 
JS: So there was no problem there? 
JE: In the beginning not at all. In the beginning, we were working extremely closely. 
Even the period 1982-1984, we had good contacts. I was here frequently when Olof 
Palme became Prime Minister. I was on mission here often on my own for his sake. I 
also went to Iran and Iraq, particularly Iran in bilateral capacities, because I was first the 
Prime Minister's Chef de Cabinet in internatio nal issues in Sweden. Then I became 
Political Director General in the Swedish foreign ministry and that gave me also a pretext 
to put on the Swedish hat to go to Iran/Iraq. So during that period I had frequent contact 
with New York. With Cordovez, often, but also very often, as I said, with Iqbal Riza. In 
1983-84, we developed the concept of confidence building measures where we built on 
the ideas that we had on Shatt al Arab which had failed, and the ships at that time were 
starting to rust, and we developed other such confidence building measures. The most 
successful one was, of course, the idea that was developed very much by Iqbal Riza and 
the team around him here, and also Diego of course. Also with myself, and with Olof 
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Palme's full blessing and very active interest in the idea of stopping the bombardment of 
civilian targets and the villages, which came to a solution on the 11 t h of June 1984. 
The beauty of that agreement was that it was a commitment of the two not to 
attack, but they didn't have to make a contractual arrangement between each other 
because they hated each other so much, and they didn't want to give each other 
legitimacy. So it was actually a cable sent and I remember the phone calls to Iqbal about 
this cable sent, and we said, "Let's put a deadline for the answer so we have a cable 
coming back confirming the agreement." So we got first the Iraqi agreement and then the 
Iranian agreement and Iqbal called me, jubilant, "We have the agreement, and it actually 
held." Then we wanted to follow that up with restrictions on attacks against the traffic, 
ships in the Persian Gulf, and also restrictions on the use of chemical weapons which we 
started to hear about in 1983. 
Then, we had more and more evidence that this was taking place. When I wasin 
Tehran on a bilateral mission, 1983, I think, I was offered to go to hospital and see the 
people who had been attacked by chemical weapons. Others also were given proof of 
what was taking place. Then Iqbal Riza was courageous enough to suggest here in New 
York - and it was approved by Perez de Cuellar, also courageously - that a mission had 
to be sent there. I don't think the matter came up in the Security Council, it was done, I 
think, within the Secretariat. 
JS: I think it came up in the Security Council but the Secretary-General decided that it 
would be better to do it on his own so it would not be associated with the Security 
Council. 
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JE: Right. Anyway, Iqbal went there and it ended up in a pretty controversial report. 
I think Iqbal himself had to pay a bit of a price at the time for doing it, but it was a very 
important report. In retrospect, I regret very much that the world did not take as seriously 
as it should the reports that were so damning against Iraq at the time. Olof Palme and I 
were very upset, both about the use of chemical weapons and the fact that there was such 
a lukewarm reaction to the use of these weapons. It was no doubt used first by the Iraqis; 
it is possible that it might have been used by the Iranians but not at all to the same extent 
as the Iraqis, as they later proved in Halabja and elsewhere. 
JS: Now I want to go back just a minute. You were going to first, really, to have 
direct contact with Saddam Hussein. What was your impression or Olof Palme's 
impression of Saddam Hussein at that point? 
JE: A ruthless leader. An absolute despot. You could feel fear in the room when you 
met him. I met him also on my own, when I took over the mediation efforts in 1988. I 
went to the region and I saw him then alone, and I recall conversations where people 
turned pale i f I did not react the way that normally one does facing Saddam Hussein. I 
recall moments when he looked at me in a combination of puzzlement, surprise, and 
slight irritation, that anyone could pose questions of that nature. And the rest of the 
people in the room were absolutely stunned that anyone could pose those questions. 
They weren't very tough [questions], but very simple ones. I just wanted to know 
whether he had any plan of going back to the internationally recognized boundaries and 
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so forth and he came out with a long story about Iraq's capabilities and that indeed Iraq 
could stay long in the area but this was only to defend its own territory "once we get 
Shatt al Arab." Then he brought me into the map room and, with his pointer, showed 
how far in they were, just to prove his point. And he came back to my question two or 
three times. He wasn't used to having any searching or probing questions to him. And of 
course the whole security apparatus was extremely tough. You could hear it in the walls, 
see it around yourself. It was a very violent society, and the violence very much came 
from the top. 
JS: And that was there from the very beginning, even at the time when - ? 
JE: Yes, we heard all the stories which we hardly believed in, about how people and 
the resistance and also inside the government had been treated, and if only a third of what 
we heard was true, it was a very brutal society. 
But he was also very charismatic. He exuberated power and strength; he was very 
fit. He had a very determined look, looked well, in the beginning particularly. But he 
stood up pretty well all through the years, physically I think, he did not allow himself to 
look in any way or show that he would be shaken by anything. He was, of course, a very 
strong person. 
JS: Others have said that nobody else on the Iraqi side even dared talk when he was in 
the room. 
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JE: No. 
JS: It was always just - that was your experience? 
JE: That's right, I can't recall anyone speaking when he was there. I can say, once, 
this particular situation where they got pale, there was for once not a translator who was 
very good, or at least he made a bad translation. He started out saying to me that "Oh, 
Mr. Eliasson, would you like to give your speech first or am I to give my speech first?" 
So I got a bit confused, he probably wanted to know, "Are you going to begin?" So I 
said, "I don't plan to give a speech, I just have a few simple questions to put," and 
everybody jumped. Well, then he looked at me again with this puzzlement and 
amusement, "What kind of questions?" Said it off rather abruptly. And then of course, 
the basic question is the issue whether you are prepared to go back to internationally 
recognized boundaries. That's when I thought that some people were going to faint! 
And so we had a three-hour conversation which ended up by him taking me like this by 
the shoulder and saying, "OK, let's go to my map room and show you were we could 
have been." 
JS: So it was not a very optimistic beginning. 
JE: No, it wasn't. We saw all the possibilities of finding a settlement. We knew 
approximately how the conflict would end, but it seemed to me that either two parties 
come to an agreement when they are equally strong or equally weak. And in this case, 
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they were pretty strong. Well, the Iranians were rather weak, but they were not hurt by 
the war so much in the beginning. We also knew that hatred would increase and the 
possibilities to come to compromises would be diminishing after every month of this 
terrible magnitude of killing. So instead they decided - well, not decided - but by the 
turn of events, they continued and when they finally made up, both were equally weak. 
The problem was, of course, that Iran had a moral superiority in the beginning, 
because they claimed, rightfully I would say, that the Security Council should have been 
clearer on the issue of withdrawal. It was a cease-fire resolution alone, and nothing about 
withdrawal, and they claimed that the Security Council was partial to Iraq, in favor of 
Iraq. Olof Palme and I discussed how we could handle this, because our whole 
credibility was at stake with a resolution which, also in our own view, was a weak one. 
Therefore I recalled international law and reminded Olof Palme of the principle of non-
acquisition of territory by force. So the line we took with the Iranians already in 
November and December 1980 was to remind them that even with their criticism (and we 
couldn't be disloyal to the Security Council of course), we were neutral. We said there 
was also basic international law, so if you would prove that this is a case of Iraqi 
aggression as you claim, then of course the principle of non-acquisition of territory by 
force should be applied and then the territories that are acquired by force would be 
returned. That made the Iranians more positively inclined towards Olof Palme in such a 
way that we almost feared a split between Olof Palme and the Secretary-General on the 
one hand and the Security Council on the other, where the Iranians would preferred to 
deal with us and not at all deal with the Security Council when they had that resolution 
which they considered so weak. 
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Now, they then, made the almost fatal mistake of crossing into Iraqi territory in 
1982, and by that they lost the moral high ground which they had in their hands. If they 
had stopped at their border, they would have been doing the diplomacy tremendously 
well. But they were then almost a pariah nation after the hostage-taking with the United 
States, and they felt that nobody would care anyway. Whatever they did, they would be 
put in the doghouse; this was more or less the way they spoke to Olof Palme and myself. 
Then they went into Iraq and then I think there came a resolution which included the call 
for withdrawal to internationally recognized boundaries, which made them even more 
bitter. 
That was the time to wake up on the basic principle of international law, I suspect. 
But in the beginning, they knew very little about international law. We met the 
revolutionaries 1980-81, and of course they had been there for a year or so after 
Khomeini came back into power and they didn't know a thing about clinical international 
law. At least, the people on the mullah side had very weak knowledge of international 
law. I recall, once we had a negotiation about the withdrawal of troops, we were 
discussing the principle that Iraq would withdraw and we wanted to just make sure that 
the Iranians then would allow a three-week period for the Iraqis to withdraw to 
internationally recognized boundaries. We thought that was a reasonable time for an 
orderly withdrawal. Then they introduced the shari'a rule, that if you break into your 
neighbor's house, you are supposed to be punished. So they were talking about giving 
every soldier twenty or forty whips and we were just shaking our heads. This was not 
normal negotiation, at least that I had seen or was going to see later on. 
15 
But Olof Palme was a very innovative person, and a very patient person -
normally, that is not associated with him, if you look at his political style in Sweden and 
elsewhere. He was asking Iqbal Riza to look for something in the Quran that we could 
use when we started the negotiations the following morning. It had been an awful 
negotiation, where we got nowhere because of this strange reflection on the Iranian side. 
Then the following morning, Iqbal Riza came up, hollow-eyed but jubilant, because he 
had found a passage in the Quran, I think Sura number 15 or 51, where it says that if the 
enemy turns his back at you, you are not allowed to attack him. 
Now we started that negotiation with those words and the Iranians were touched, 
almost moved to tears, that we had cited the Quran, had found an opening in the Quran. I 
still remember the sticky beard of someone embracing me afterwards, a revolutionary 
saying, "Thank you for showing respect for our religion and culture." 
So, in the beginning it was a very strange exercise of talking with Iran, not least 
because of that lack of knowledge of international law. If they had known international 
law better, they might have still seen the benefits of not crossing the border in '82. That 
was revenge, they had to do it, the basic shari'a, the Quran like the Old Testament, in 
fact, says: Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. 
JS: And already at that point, were they determined that somebody should declare 
that Iraq was the aggressor? 
JE: They were absolutely convinced that the war had been started by the Iraqis, 
although they were pretty vague about the Iraqi assertions that there had been artillery 
16 
attacks across the border. They did not deny of course, in the beginning, the charge of 
export of revolution, because in the beginning the Islamic revolution was going to be i f 
not world-wide, at least a region-wide activity. So on those counts they were a bit vague. 
But when it comes to the organized attack, there was no doubt that it was started by the 
Iraqis, so they came back to that all the time. Their [the Iraqi's] guilt had to be 
established, and that they also should be punished for that, pay a price, which later also 
was discontinued within the framework of Resolution 598. Later, it was my job to 
implement that resolution. 
JS: And was the order of the requirements of 598 that caused you so many problems? 
JE: Right. 
JS: And that was never resolved until -
JE: We've discussed whether the sequence was a time sequence or just a logical 
sequence. This was our big problem, and it wasn't solved until after the Kuwait invasio n 
when Iraq suddenly realized, because of the pressures, that they had to agree, and in a 
way 598 fell into oblivion. It hasn't been fully implemented. What we wanted also to 
work with, we tried to start with paragraph eight, with regional security, just to get things 
moving, but we were also stuck in the beginning on the prisoners of war [issue]. Of 
course the guilt issue was there too. 
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JS: I wanted to ask you about the regional security concept. Where did that come 
from and did you really ever have any vision of what -
JE: It's like today in Kosovo, and in the Balkans, where you realize more and more 
that you have to have regional security in order to avoid explosions within this region. 
This we finally realized in the Balkans region, that if we don't have stronger regional 
cooperation, i f we don't have a prospect of this region attaching itself closer to European 
integration, then these explosions will come every third or fourth year. This was very 
much an Olof Palme concept; we were very much in on the regional security. We had 
just worked on the CSCE, the confidence-building measures of the Conference of 
Security and Cooperation in Europe, now OSCE. This is classical Swedish thinking. 
Gianni Picco was interested too. He saw it as a device because he worked very closely 
with me in my last four years, 1988-92. It was the concept we thought could be fruitfully 
developed but... 
JS: Did you have any serious discussions about it with either side? 
JE: Yes, oh yes, the Iranians particularly Yavad Zarif, Deputy Foreign Minister, every 
time I see him, he says, you taught me a new expression: Confidence Building Measures. 
In the beginning we laughed about it, but now it is a good one. Actually the Iranians say 
that they are working along these lines in the development of the relations with the Gulf 
countries, except of course - well, maybe they would even in the end include Iraq in that. 
The war seems distant today. But it was an interesting concept and I wish we could have 
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worked harder. You know, in negotiations, it is always important to keep something 
going, to have talks on something, and we had a list, it was like an a la carte menu. I had 
a little bit of involvement in [Resolution] 598. When you asked me these questions, I 
actually recall that I was Political Director in the Swedish foreign ministry, 1987. Olof 
Palme was assassinated in February 1986. In that time, I had no official function in the 
Iran/Iraq issues between 1986 and 1988, until I was given the Personal Representative 
role. However, at the funeral in Stockholm, Perez de Cuellar asked the incoming Prime 
Minister, Ingvar Carlsson, whether I could be available for him for advice, since I had 
been working so hard with the negotiations. So I was in contact with Diego Cordovez 
and with Iqbal Riza most intensely, during this period 1986-87. 
In the beginning of 1987, I had an invitation by Michael Armacost and Dick 
Murphy to come to Washington. I think it was in the middle of February 1987. They 
said that now is the time to push for a resolution to the Iran-Iraq war, because they had 
received indications that the Russians -1 don't know to what extent they were talking to 
the Chinese - would not necessarily go against a solution along the lines that they hoped. 
And then, actually, we sketched together the elements at a two-day meeting. Well, we 
met one day, then lunch, and then I met Dick Murphy the other day. We discussed the 
elements that could be part of a resolution, which later turned out to be, of course, 598, 
and which then of course was very much negotiated with the P5 [Permanent Five 
Members of the Security Council] and where, of course, Perez de Cuellar and the people 
around him played an important role. But I recall that I was a contact both with one of 
the P5 on this issue and also the British but less so. And the Secretariat. 
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JS: That's interesting. And was that before the Secretary-General had his press 
conference, which I think was on the first or beginning of the year, in which he proposed 
that the five foreign ministers should meet? 
JE: No, it was after that. We all pressed that we follow the issue, that we have to bring 
it back now, and as conditions were improving - we had, at that time, Gorbachev in 
power and there were signs of Russia that there was change underway. 
JS: Gorbachev was already there? 
JE: Gorbachev was there. We had generally the feeling that something was cooking 
in a positive way, and that perhaps one could actually devise a formula, to establish the 
Security Council authority in a good and solid way, and also finally get the Iranians to 
realize that the Security Council, which would in the end be necessary, could bring about 
peace. So I think there was pressure on Perez de Cuellar: I myself from Stockholm, 
people around him here, maybe some people in the region who felt that this war was 
indeed dangerous. There were, of course, conspiracy theories that many people would 
like to see both Iran and Iraq get very weak, there were those who even said so, but I 
think that it was a general realization that this could not go on. But by the beginning of 
1987, there was a strong realization that there must be a strong and determined effort. 
JS: That's very interesting, because that was the other question I had. During this 
period, did you on the Swedish side have contacts with the Permanent Members on this 
subject? 
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JE: I did. 
JS: It was largely with - ? 
JE: The US Our ambassador in Washington was very strong. He had a very strong 
personal relationship with Armacost. I think they played tennis together and Armacost 
had heard about me and Wille Wachtmeister who was our ambassador, he was there for 
14-15 years, he became dean of the corps. I was one of his assistants when he was 
Political Director-General. We have a very strong personal relationship. And Wille 
called me and said, "You know Mike Armacost wants you to come over. You have a 
great chance now to make a contribution," and I flew over the following day. And we 
were sitting there, I have a strange feeling it was the 19 t h of February 1987. 
JS: It could be, because the press conference of the Secretary-General was about the 
third or fourth of January. 
JE: Oh really? I didn't recall, but now when you say it, I recall. 
JS: At one point, Perez de Cuellar went by helicopter to the Prime Minister's country 
residence. Were you there? Can you describe the meeting? 
21 
JE: Oh yes, Olof Palme invited me to come up to his [the Swedish Prime Minister's] 
country place, which is actually a military protected area. Anyway, he has a pretty 
simple cottage there. We put out sheets on the field outside for the helicopter to know 
where to land. So there were these big white sheets out on the field, four, five of them 
and we saw the helicopter coming down. It was an absolutely beautiful summer, 
morning. It was summer 1984. Sweden was at its very best, sunny, not too hot, and 
Perez de Cuellar upbeat, happier than I'd seen him before, relaxed. He went in a rowboat 
out there at the rest of the Prime Minister's country residence. Gianni Pic co came in, had 
been jogging in the morning, and said he'd never got such fresh air and so much oxygen 
in his lungs. Running the most beautiful passage through a wood, a forest around 
Palme's country residence, where the air was clean and crisp. We had a light lunch with 
salmon, I recall, and very good conversation, sitting out on the porch, we were all sitting 
in the library together. We were upbeat because we had had this little success of the June 
end of bombings, so we felt that now we were on to something, where a step-by-step 
approach could lead to a comprehensive settlement. We knew what could be the 
elements and the solution, but also that we could, in parallel - again, I recall the situation 
in 1981-82 - that we could devise more steps, so we had to brainstorm on what such steps 
could be. As I said earlier, it was chemical weapons which we were both very upset 
about, and on both sides, both the Swedish side and the U N side, and also the possibility 
of protecting traffic better in the Gulf and a few other things. I was using the phrase that 
Olof Palme loved, we had to "pull the teeth out of the war". That was what we had our 
brainstorming about. 
22 
JS: To skip ahead, in the end, your question of who was responsible for the war was 
used by Perez de Cuellar in a different context, and that is for the release of hostages in 
Lebanon. Were you aware of that? You were at that point still Special Representative. 
JE: Yes, this was a very sensitive issue. I recognized that there was a new element 
coming in, and I must admit that my friend Gianni Picco was a bit secretive. 
JS: As he always is. 
JE: Well, we had a very open relationship, I hope mutual respect for different 
qualities, although we also saw weaknesses, I think. But anyway, he was a bit more 
Byzantine than normally. I was asked together with Benon Sevan to go along to Tehran, 
in September 1991 it must have been, and we were to have a broad range of discussions. 
That's why, since Benon Sevan came along, he would discuss Afghanistan too. I would 
be there to give the sign that it was also official talks about the war, about Iran-Iraq, the 
implementation of Resolution 598. But I realized that something was cooking, because 
they were going to have a private meeting with Rafsanjani. At that meeting, I was not 
supposed to be in. Of course this made me upset. I was given some reason that I can't 
even recall, but it didn't quite calm me. But anyway, I felt that this was happening, and 
then, although they didn't really confirm that this link was going to be established, but I 
had the feeling and so did my associate Anders Liden, who helped me here in the mission 
- I was the U N ambassador. He said that he also had the feeling that something was 
cooking on getting a deal on hostages linked to Iraq, guilt of aggression. I had no real 
23 
problem, because my own belief actually was leaning in that direction, when it comes to 
who started the war, but of course to tie it to such an issue could damage strongly the 
credibility of Resolution 598. On the other hand, if this was a way to get a solution, 
maybe it could be understandable. It was kept in absolute secrecy. I think I was put in a 
position of what the Americans call "deniability". I was not involved at all in any such 
discussions but I had a vague feeling that this was coming. 
JS: In this connection, I've also interviewed Ismat Kittani and Kittani insists that on 
the Iraqi side they had no idea about it until Perez de Cuellar's book came out, that on the 
Iraqi side they never totally trusted Perez de Cuellar. Did you have that impression? 
JE: Yes, I have that feeling too. They really didn't trust anybody in the U N . I don't 
think they trusted Olof Palme either. I don't know to what extent they trusted Waldheim, 
Cordovez, possibly, myself, I don't know. They had reason to have a guilty conscience 
too. So who would they trust, i f this person would get the facts out? I don't know if they 
trusted anybody. 
But I must also tell you about the dramatic period in August 1988, after 
Resolution 598 finally was accepted by both sides. The negotiations started in Geneva, 
and I want you to know that that cease-fire was extremely shaky. Both parties were, first 
of all, very nervous, very suspicious of the other side, but also very dissatisfied with the 
situation and the risks of the outcome for their regimes. They had the option of war as a 
very real option, both of them, and they also feared the other side - knowing, by the way, 
that the other side had the option of war. So that negotiation was probably the worst, the 
24 
most cumbersome, the most straining negotiation that I've ever gone through. I think 
Perez de Cuellar actually was absolutely exhausted when I came to relieve him in the end 
of August 1988. He was there himself. He looks frail but he is stronger than he looks, as 
you know. I like the man so much, by the way, I have tremendous sympathy for Perez de 
Cuellar. Even from what I said, I knew he wanted to put me in deniability on all that, but 
also I had a very warm relationship, almost a father-son relationship, I would say. He 
was extremely kind to me. We have been in contact through the years, always passing 
greetings to each other. 
But I felt sorry for him because he called me in Sweden personally and said that, 
"I am the Secretary-General. This is taking up sixteen hours of the day for me these first 
three days. I've been in consultation with the parties, I've also been in contact with the 
P5 informally, and it turns out that you are the best candidate to help me out. Everybody 
would like to have you, they recall you, you were with Palme." Ismat Kittani 
particularly, evidently, had supported my candidature. I don't whether this is something I 
should regret or be grateful for! But anyway, he said, "You are the name that everybod y 
agrees upon, both Iranians and Iraqis want you, and I want to name you my Personal 
Representative for Iran-Iraq." I was at the Foreign Minister's Meeting up in Kiruna, north 
of Sweden, and I went up to the Swedish Foreign Minister, and said, "Listen, I got this 
call and told him about it. Do you think I should take it?" "Of course you should," he 
said. "But I'm U N Ambassador," I said. "Well, you have to do both," he replied. So in 
my masochistic work ethic, I accepted it. I went there and this was absolutely incredible, 
they were so difficult. They were so suspicious. The forms of negotiation were so much 
reflecting the suspicions, you wouldn't believe it. 
25 
We were sitting from nine in the morning often till one o clock at night, either in a 
meeting or private meeting separately with them. They were evidently trying to exhaust 
me because I was alone together with a team which was Ralph Zachlin, Giani Picco was 
still there, Downs-Thomas, and Paul Kavanaugh. We had these unending sessions. I 
knew they were trying to exhaust me. I'm a pretty strong person, I'm very physical and 
usually have been (knocks on wood). I was getting up there with a new fresh shirt in the 
morning, looking as though I had been waiting for them and sleeping eight hours while I 
in fact had been sleeping three, and this went on and on and on. It was a tremendous 
strain. 
My wife tells me that when I relaxed over the phone, I asked her what day it is, I 
forgot the date of the week. And it was important to keep them working and giving them 
new tasks, giving them new ideas, and we even had a connection to the airport. I had a 
man out at the airport to let me know if they signaled to the delegations that the plane 
would leave. They had two planes standing there, one from Iran and one from Iraq and 
there was a non-aligned meeting taking place on the 6 t h and 7 t h of September in Cyprus. 
We were afraid they were sneaking out to go out to that meeting and then go back home 
and get out of my hands. So I did everything to make sure to give them issues to deal and 
work with. I gave them a little hope on this and that, and my big job was to keep them 
there, because I felt very much that there was a very frail cease-fire. The war could erupt 
very easily. 
That went on and on, and the shape of the table was almost Vietnam-style 
negotiations. First the tables were facing each other, their tables, so they looked at each 
other. They insisted that those tables were switched in such a way that they were facing 
26 
me, us, and for the first week or so, I negotiated with Perez de Cuellar, then he left and I 
continued on my own. But then they were facing not each other but us, so that they were 
talking through us to the other side. We had walkie-talkies in both side rooms so that 
they were entering on the first split of the second together, so that nobody would have to 
wait for each other. We couldn't bring them together to talk directly anywhere. 
Then I said to Perez de Cuellar, "Why don't we offer coffee and you suggest that 
we drink coffee at the end of the table?" And when they came in, they looked with 
surprise at this coffee table which was down at the end of that triangle, and at the end of 
coffee, Perez de Cuellar said, "And now I suggest we take a break and we invite you to 
have coffee." And they moved like animals in a herd and slowly approached each side, 
when they picked up coffee from each side of the table, on their side, and then in the end, 
Ismat Kittani showed his integrity. He walked over and spoke to the interpreter on the 
other side because he knew him, or he knew the language. So that was a very brave step. 
I don't know whether it was authorized. 
Then I had something which is still known as - its been joked about both in Iraq 
and Iran, even Tariq Aziz remembered it when I was there for the Secretary-General in 
November 1997 on another mission with Brahimi and Cardenas --1 arranged something 
which I call not "continental breakfast" at the Inter-Continental, but "confidential 
breakfast." So I had a confidential breakfast with Cyrus Nasseri, the brilliant Iranian 
ambassador in Geneva who was a close advisor to Velayati, who I think was conducting 
the negotiations on their side. On the Iraqi side, it was Ismat Kittani, who was there on 
behalf of Tariq Aziz. We had just the three of us, a very important discussion for the first 
time, together, in rather relaxing circumstances. 
27 
JS: And did you have the feeling that Ismat Kittani had the full confidence of the 
Iraqi side? 
JE: I think there was a tremendous respect of his professional competence. They 
knew he was a master diplomat, but of course they also knew that he was a Kurd. I, 
myself, discovered in Ismat that there was something in the eyes, and at some instances, 
also when I saw him later, he was extremely relieved to live in New York, although he 
never crossed the line. It could cause him or his relatives many problems. But I always 
entertained the hope that he knew what kind of regime he was dealing with, that he would 
feel better in New York or Geneva. But he was of course a tremendously good 
professional, one of the world's best. I would rank him among the best diplomats I have 
dealt with. 
JS: And he's the one who brought the word of Saddam Hussein's acceptance of the 
cease-fire to the Secretary-General? 
JE: Exactly, and he suggested that I take over the Personal Representative role. We 
have a mutually warm relationship. 
JS: He had said that, by the way, on tape. 
28 
JE: Well, we had a little bit of a cumbersome relationship because he was Special 
Representative of the Secretary-General in Somalia, and I didn't quite share the views of 
Boutros-Ghali and Ismat Kittani on our humanitarian work. I want to do more in 
humanitarian and less in military. 
JS: Why did you agree to accept the Special Representative job when the prospects 
did not look very good? 
JE: Well, first of all, it was the classical duty syndrome, of course, and also I was 
honored that I was asked to be in this position. I always wanted to mediate and I did it 
helping Palme and Perez de Cuellar and Waldheim, and in this, I would be on my own. I 
was in my forties, so I felt that this was a challenge, and I also really felt that I had a good 
idea of how it should be wrapped up. But of course, it was a very difficult job. No, there 
was really no decision-making process in this, except going to the Swedish Foreign 
Minister, having him give the blessings for the government. 
JS: And in this long period of negotiations, can you identify any one thing that you 
feel was accomplished? 
JE: Yes, I think the model that we developed both for the comprehensive approach 
and the step-by-step approach was the model that was adopted later on. 
29 
JS: Well, I meant when you were Special Representative, in carrying on these 
fruitless negotiations in Geneva mostly, was there anything...? 
JE: Well, the prisoners-of-war exchanges that came about later on, and the contacts 
with the Red Cross - and the fact that the war did not break out again. The humanitarian 
aspects, I think, were the ones I was most proud of. We brought about contact with the 
Red Cross. I myself visited a prison camp, a POW camp, in Iran. The big release came, 
of course, as you know, after the Iraq-Kuwait war. And then there was a wholesale 
release. 
JS: And your relationships with the IFCRC [International Federation of Red Cross 
and Red Crescent Societies]? 
JE: Very close. 
JS: Okay, because at that point, I think there were some difficulties between the 
Secretary-General and the president of the IFCRC. 
JE: Yes, I recall that, but I had very good relationship because I had helped the Red 
Cross in Angola before. So I had very close contact, and I think we prepared the ground 
for the big release, of course, in 1991, but also that we had a few releases of sick people, I 
can't recall now, but also contact letters and my visit to a camp were important. We also 
introduced the idea of confidence-building measures. That's when we had the long 
30 
discussion about how Iran-Iraq could develop a confidence-building measures system, 
although very little was done. 
JS: But you did discuss those at that point? 
JE: Yes, but I think at least in the beginning the main contribution, and its not for me 
to say this, but the main contribution by Perez de Cuellar and myself was to simply see to 
it that the war did not break out again. Those three four months between August 1988 
and November, December 1988 were very, very shaky. 
JS: He has said the same thing. 
JE: Yes, we were very worried. That's when I developed a very close relationship 
with Perez de Cuellar because he was so tired, and I was tired, and when you are two 
very tired, you tend to be very open. He showed to me, really, the concern that this 
would explode again. And he said, "Jan, you have to be strong now, you have to be 
creative and I trust you so much." We had developed a very strong relationship and 
that's what I recall, perhaps being the biggest contribution that we kept a structure there, 
a credible structure, of negotiation. We kept them busy. And also, of course, I can tell 
you, a very important part of the job was to always keep the P5 in the picture. I had 
constant briefings; I had extremely good relations with the five ambassadors here and 
also through other channels, with their ministers. They asked to see me, so I ensured that 
31 
they were behind and I was working very closely with them. I didn't like to see a return 
of that split that I saw in the early part of the mediation with Palme. 
JS: Did you do that mainly here in New York? 
JE: Yes, yes, I was U N Ambassador here, so I had constantly contact with the 
ambassadors here, very close ones with Tom Pickering from the US, later on Lavreaux, 
was it Lavreaux? Like the Chinese, he was very glad that I always briefed him. And I 
also asked them to put the Iranians and Iraqis under pressure, to tell them, this you will 
not get away with. So there was both the work between them and then us behind the 
scenes getting them to stay in line. 
JS: And a final question: did you, from a Swedish perspective - this would go back to 
Olof Palme as well as yourself - see this as a turning point in international relations, that 
is because the Iran-Iraq resolution was in fact the first cooperation of the P5? Did you 
perceive that at the time as being significant? 
JE: Yes. First, in my speeches, I quoted that as the first sign that the Cold War is 
coming to an end. I had a tremendously happy period as Permanent Representative here 
in New York between 1988 and 1992, because there was a whole period where the whole 
Cold War situation loosened up. 
I recall Gorbachev's speech on the 8 t h of December 1988, that had unfortunately 
almost too much agreed upon in the Security Council, and references to Chapter Seven 
32 
wholesale, and in fact, as you know, Jim, the U N always took upon itself too much 
during that period. We had problems of digestion and we went into everywhere. For 
peacekeeping there was no problem of finding hoops, although the problem was we 
didn't quite know how to deal with the civil wars, we didn't get the right mix on the 
interventions. 
Now when I later entered the U N and saw the Somalia operation, I was almost 
desperate about the bad mix, that civil wars had to be dealt with in more sophisticated 
manners. Not only sending 30,000 troops; you have to have a comprehensive program, a 
civic society program, you have to bring in other elements. If there are complex crises, 
you have to have complex responses, and we didn't do that. But I always said that in my 
speeches the first sign was, actually for me, the first sign was - I recall when you said to 
me in these questions about my visit to Washington in February 1987 - that's when, on 
my plane back, I said to myself, "My god, finally we get away from this myth that the 
U N was so effective earlier. We had gone through all these years with a veto either from 
the West or from Russia, 50s, 60s, 70s, maybe now the Security Council could become a 
negotiation body. 
JS: You would go through -
JE: Yes, definitely. It was extremely - no, I used it always as an example and it 
actually opened up for what then happened in 1987, 88, 89, 90. Of course then came the 
rd 
whole setback, Somalia, on 3 October 1993, when eighteen Americans were - when one 
American was dragged on the street. The same way C N N got the US into Somalia, the 
33 
C N N also got the US out, I would say. For me, that date is a very tragic date. That was 
the beginning of the end of the operation. We never finished the job in Somalia, we're 
still paying the price for that. And it also meant that the U N became much more than it 
should have been, a scapegoat for what happened, and the positive trend in terms of US 
opinion and support for it, the U N , waned and disappeared. I actually came to the 
conclusion that I would be doing more useful work back in Sweden, in the beginning of 
1994 when I left the U N . 
You asked about the role of the Secretariat. The Secretariat played an important 
role in preparing for the rounds of negotiations and as the channel to the Secretary-
General during the period I was Personal Representative. A l l ideas which were put 
forward were previously discussed with the Secretariat, and the Secretary-General 
himself, if they were important points. Texts were usually prepared in advance and 
discussed with both parties in search for a common ground for agreement. Proposals for 
some confidence-building measures, including the release of POW's were also put 
forward to both parties. There was a tendency on both sides to seek positive signals as 
signs of weaknesses, which made it difficult to move ahead with confidence building 
measures. The reports to the Security Council were usually drafted in cooperation with 
the Secretariat and the final version accepted by the Secretary-General. The negotiations 
were held in plenary meetings in Geneva in the beginning, usually chaired by the 
Secretary-General and myself, sometimes, and indirectly through my travels to Baghdad 
and Tehran as well as through numerous contacts by me or the Secretariat with 
representatives of the parties in New York or Geneva. I also tried to involve the Security 
34 
Council, to make it back up certain principles that we tried to establish with Resolution 
598. 
I felt I had the full support of the Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar throughout 
my assignment as his Personal Representative. Perhaps I would have preferred a more 
direct contact, for the communications for the Secretary-General often went via his staff 
and Secretariat; but the important discussions, the most important ones, took place with 
him. 
The insistence of Iran to identify Iraq as the aggressor complicated the effort to 
find agreement and to build confidence between the parties. The Secretary-General's 
report came after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and Iraq's withdrawal from Iranian territory. 
I was not involved in the drafting of this report, whereby the Secretary-General 
took the unilateral decision to implement one of the paragraphs of Resolution 598. The 
international situation and the isolation of Iraq in the world community made this 
possible without any questions being raised. The decision of the Secretary-General was 
taken without my participation and without my knowledge, although as I said earlier, I 
had no problem with the substance of this decision. 
The end of the war was primarily the result of war-weariness on both sides and a 
concerted effort by the Permanent Five members of the Security Council to put pressure 
on the parties. The Swedish contribution, through Palme and later by myself, was mainly 
to keep the dialogue, even if indirect, going between the parties. That led to the saving of 
many lives through, among other things, the end of the bombing of the two capitals and 
border cities, after the cease-fire, to a consolidation of the cease-fire and to the release of 
sick and wounded prisoners of war. 
35 
JS: Those are all important points. 
36