Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (58 page)

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Authors: Samantha Power

BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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Vieira de Mello’s fiercest clash with Headquarters came over his handling of petroleum, East Timor’s one potentially lucrative source of revenue. In 1989, when Australia had recognized Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, a grateful Indonesia granted Australia generous access to oil resources that lay close to East Timor’s shores. Vieira de Mello knew that UNTAET would be considered a failure if it did not manage to persuade the Australians to return what rightfully belonged to the Timorese. Australia’s GDP dwarfed any oil revenues the country would receive from the vicinity of East Timor. By contrast, if the UN could secure the oil fields for Timor, they could potentially triple the island’s GNP.
 
 
The negotiations were tense from the start. Australian diplomats tried to claim that the oil was worth so little that the status quo should be preserved. Sensing that Australia would not give up its claim without a fight, Vieira de Mello decided to preserve his own warm ties with the Australian government by removing himself from the proceedings and appointing as the lead UN negotiator Peter Galbraith, who had been U.S. ambassador to Croatia in the Balkans and whom he had made UNTAET’s minister of political affairs. Galbraith, who could be undiplomatic, threatened to sue Australia at the International Court of Justice if it did not offer the Timorese, in accordance with the law of the sea, all revenues north of the midway point between East Timor and Australia. The Australians complained repeatedly to Vieira de Mello that Galbraith was raising Timorese expectations unreasonably and sabotaging ties between the UN and Australia. They had expected the UN to negotiate the agreement, not to act strictly in the interests of the Timorese. But the Security Council had tasked UNTAET to act as the Timorese government, so mere mediation was not appropriate. Vieira de Mello urged Galbraith to drive the best bargain for the Timorese.
 
 
In order to drive that bargain, he, Galbraith, and others in UNTAET pleaded with Headquarters to send a lawyer with expertise in petroleum law. But just as UN Headquarters took two years to respond to pleas for experts in organized crime for Kosovo, it could not quickly call upon specialists for Timor.Yet not long before a deal was to be signed divvying up one portion of the oil proceeds, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast sent Vieira de Mello a long cable, telling him that he had consulted with an expert on the law of the sea who had said that he was giving too much away.“It will be for East Timor, as an independent nation, to define its national interest,” Prendergast wrote. Vieira de Mello was livid. “Sergio decided rightly that the way to be a success was to become more Timorese than the Timorese,” recalls Prentice.“So anything that suggested that he hadn’t placed their best interests at heart was always going to draw a rather strident response.” Vieira de Mello whipped off one of the most blistering cables of his long career, writing:
 
 
Although I read Prendergast’s memo on 1 April, I note that it was dated 22 March and was thus, despite appearances, not an April Fool’s joke . . . Headquarters was kept fully informed at each and every stage. I would have welcomed any timely advice . . . Why did I not hear previously, either in person, by telephone, or in writing? . . .
 
 
 
 
I am (I had hoped that this was presumed) fully aware that East Timor will have to live with any decision made much longer and more profoundly than will we ... in short, contrary to the impression given, the East Timorese leadership do have minds of their own and do not simply wait, mutely, for us to provide poor advice. More frequent contact with the realities of the field— as I learnt in my career—provide a vital antidote to such misconceptions.
 
 
 
 
He defended Galbraith’s approach to the negotiations and fired back that New York was being unduly influenced by an adviser to the subsidiary of an American company called Oceanic, which had a vested interest in the negotiations. “I have yet to read of an alternative, feasible route that could have been taken that would have led to a more beneficial outcome,” he wrote. “These gains should not be jeopardized by an eleventh-hour lack of unity on the part of East Timor and the United Nations, particularly if this were to become public, which, as we all know, is regrettably a risk within the United Nations.” In a second draft of the cable, Vieira de Mello noted that while the Timorese had been made aware of his response, “The pique is mine.” And for the final draft he altered the sentence to: “The disappointment, irritation, and pique are mine.”
27
 
 
In the end Galbraith secured a deal by which the Timorese and Australians would create a Joint Petroleum Development Area, from which the Timorese would receive 90 percent of the revenues and the Australians 10 percent, a dramatic improvement over the unfair 50-50 split that predated the UN negotiations. The Bayu-Undan development within this area was thought to contain gas and oil reserves worth $6 billion to $7 billion, which would henceforth bring $5 billion in revenue to tiny East Timor.
28
The Galbraith-led negotiations would quadruple the oil available to East Timor for sale.
 
 
On April 24, 2002, East Timor’s presidential elections were held. Xanana Gusmão’s opponent said that, even though he expected to lose in a landslide, he thought it important to show the Timorese that they would have alternatives in elections. The two candidates walked together arm in arm into the polling station where they cast their votes. In a marked contrast to the August 1999 referendum, only one slight irregularity was reported in the 282 polling stations throughout the country.
29
Gusmão was elected president of East Timor with 83 percent of the vote. Vieira de Mello told Carlos Valenzuela, the Colombian who ran the elections for the UN, “Thank you for the most boring elections of my life.” East Timor was less than one month away from being a fully independent nation.
 
 
GETTING A LIFE
 
 
Part of the reason Vieira de Mello had time to work nineteen-hour days was that he had no serious romantic attachments tying him down. The job’s challenges distracted him from his loneliness. Indeed in February 2000, just two months into the new millennium, he complained memorably to his close friend in Geneva, Fabienne Morisset: “February already and still a bonkless century.”
 
 
In his isolation Vieira de Mello had settled into a routine in East Timor. He ate a sandwich in the office for lunch, used the Internet and reading packages from friends to keep up with events in the rest of the world, brought work home, dined ascetically on rice and chocolate bars, made his phone calls to New York late at night, and avoided the cocktail circuit. Kosovo had given Vieira de Mello his first taste of being a local celebrity. But as the ruler of East Timor, he was almost as well known as Gusmão. He rarely went out because his unfailing politeness toward the Timorese and toward his UN employees demanded energy and because he cherished the few hours he had to himself. When he served as the best man in the Dili wedding of his special assistant, Fabrizio Hochschild, he ducked out of the after-party early. “I’m so sorry, Fabrizio,” he told his close friend. “I just can’t take being ‘on’ anymore. I’m exhausted.” He told his friend Morisset of the hollowness he felt despite having finally reached great heights at the UN. “Everything is all swimming along professionally,” he said. “But what am I doing with my life? What is all of this for?”
 
 
In late 2000 he had met Carolina Larriera, a twenty-seven-year-old willowy, elegant Argentinian who had gone to university in New York and in 1997 had volunteered her way to a Headquarters staff job as a public information officer. In East Timor, her first field posting, she helped dispense World Bank microcredit grants to Timorese businesses. Larriera was drawn to Vieira de Mello’s familiar South American charisma, but she had heard about his exploits with women and steered clear. In October 2000, nearly a year into her posting, she briefed him on the microcredit program in advance of a donors’ conference he was attending. The pair discussed the problem of finding and retaining qualified Timorese managers. A month later, when she attended a small dinner party at Ramos-Horta’s home, Vieira de Mello approached her, and the two drifted into easy conversation. Playing up the traditional rivalry between Brazil and Argentina, he described how his mother had fled Buenos Aires and returned to Rio when she was seven months’ pregnant so as to make sure he was born in Brazil.
 
 
The pair became romantically involved in January 2001 and conducted their relationship privately. Larriera was concerned that her colleagues would judge her for her involvement with the head of the UN mission. He was not fully invested: He saw other women and concentrated mainly on work, spending many evenings at his home alone, listening to Beethoven or another somber composer and poring over paperwork, while drinking a glass of Black Label. “You can work and be involved in a meaningful relationship.The two are not incompatible,” Larriera insisted. “No, I can’t,” he said.
 
 
In September 2001, frustrated by his refusal to prioritize the relationship, she broke it off and stopped taking his phone calls. “This isn’t worth it,” she told him.“You’re not with me, and I want more.” He asked her to reconsider, but she was firm. Unless he made a real commitment, she said, they were through.
 
 
On September 11, 2001, Vieira de Mello was in Jakarta, Indonesia, meeting with senior Indonesian officials. At the end of the day he said good night to his aides and headed upstairs to his room, where he ordered room service. His cell phone rang, and it was Larriera telling him to turn on the television. The regular CNN broadcast had been interrupted and was showing the flaming World Trade Center towers that he used to view from his apartment in New York. Ibrahim, his bodyguard, knocked loudly on the door. “Mr. Sergio,” he shouted, “have you seen what happened?” When Ibrahim entered, his boss was holding his shortwave radio tuned to a French broadcast, as the English CNN broadcast played behind him. He just shook his head, speechless. “There was nothing to say,” recalls Ibrahim. “What do you say?”
 
 
On October 14, 2001, a month after the terrorist attacks, Vieira de Mello called Larriera and invited her over, saying he needed to talk. When she arrived at his Dili home, the lights were out. She let herself in through the side door and found a row of candles leading her from the doorway to the living room. Sprinkled on the floor were paper hearts that he had cut out of colored construction paper. “From now on, it’s the new Sergio!” he said, emerging. Larriera was skeptical. “I have changed,” he said. “And I will change. Don’t believe me. Watch me.” From that point on, the couple referred to their relationship before his October turnaround as their “prehistory.” “History,” he said, “begins today.”
 
 
Vieira de Mello’s closest colleagues at that time were in serious relationships. Jonathan Prentice, his special assistant, had married his high school sweetheart, Antonia, and the pair were inseparable. Hochschild, his previous assistant, had been a determined bachelor, but he and his wife had given birth to a child soon after their wedding in East Timor. Martin Griffiths, his former deputy in New York, had gotten divorced and remarried in 1999, naming Vieira de Mello the godfather of his newborn daughter. Now Vieira de Mello seemed to want what they had. He wrote to Larriera a week after they got back together, sounding like a teenager. After sending her
“un besito matinal,”
or morning kiss, he wrote that he found himself thinking that what they had together was too good to be true, but he exclaimed, “Fortunately, it
is
true.”
30
 
 
He filed for divorce in December 2001. Although he had lived a separate life from Annie since 1996, she took the news badly. However distant they had grown, she had never expected him to leave the marriage. But he was determined to go ahead. He wrote to Antonio Carlos Machado, his best friend in Brazil, that after “various gaffes of mine designed to duck reality,” he had decided that he was deeply in love. Noting that he had no idea how draining love could be, he wrote that it had nonetheless filled him “with a new and vital
élan,
” and he was determined “to make the most of what remains of my life instead of wasting the few years that are left.”
 
 
Vieira de Mello told Machado that he had what would be an exhausting six months remaining in East Timor. Afterward he planned to take three months off “so as to do many of the things I’ve dreamed of and delayed my whole life.”
31
He crammed a few of those ambitions into his weekends with Larriera in Timor. He insisted the couple climb Ramelau, Timor’s highest peak. He said he wanted to learn to scuba dive, and they got PADI certified. He announced he wanted to do the deepest dive in the area, so they plunged 130 feet off the coast of Atauro island.
 
 
At Christmastime he did something with Larriera he had done with none of his other girlfriends: He invited her home to Brazil to meet his mother. She in turn brought him to Buenos Aires, where she guided him to 1853 Vincente López Street, the house where the Vieira de Mello family had lived from the time he was twenty days old until he was three.

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