SECRETARY-GENERAL, AT HEADQUARTERS MEMORIAL SERVICE, PAYS TRIBUTE TO ANGOLA MISSION VICTIMS OF 25 JUNE AIR CRASH

6 July 1998

Press Release
SG/SM/6630

SECRETARY-GENERAL, AT HEADQUARTERS MEMORIAL SERVICE, PAYS TRIBUTE TO ANGOLA MISSION VICTIMS OF 25 JUNE AIR CRASH

19980706 Also Notes 50th Anniversary, Today, of First Fatalities Among United Nations Peacekeepers, in Palestine Truce Organization

This is the text of a statement today by Secretary-General Kofi Annan at a Headquarters memorial service for the victims of the 25 June crash of an aircraft of the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA), and commemoration of the first peacekeeping fatalities:

We have gathered today to pay homage to colleagues fallen in the cause of peace. On 25 June, Alioune Blondin Beye and seven members of his team made the ultimate sacrifice in the search for peace in Angola. Maître Beye from Mali, Koffi Adjoyi from Togo, Beandegar Dessande from Chad, Amadou Moctar Gueye from Senegal, Ibikunle Williams from Nigeria, Alvaro Costa from Portugal, and their pilots -- Jason Hunter and Andrew McCurrach from South Africa -- we will always remember them.

In a tragic sense, history has come full circle. For we are also here to remember the first to give their lives while serving the United Nations in the cause of peace. Rene de Labarriere, of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine, was killed 50 years ago today; his colleague, Ole Bakke, died a week later.

This may give us occasion to pause and reflect upon what we do. It would be melodramatic to say that our work is to wage a war for peace; but it is appropriate to say that we seek to build defences against violence, poverty, injustice and destruction. It would be boastful to say our actions change the course of history; but it would be wrong -- and just as destructive -- not to recognize that our work does have importance, and does make a difference.

And so we must carry on that work -- in Angola as anywhere else, we can make a difference -- no matter how great the risk, no matter how absent the immediate reward.

Our thoughts and prayers go today to the friends and families of the fallen. They go to the men and women who continue to risk their lives in the field every day. But they also go to the people of Angola. For the sake of Maître Beye, his team, and all those who have perished in this conflict, and for the sake of the future generations of Angola, I have one prayer above all: that this yet to be united nation will one day reap the fruits of peace. That those we mourn today will know, wherever they are, that their work on behalf of the United Nations will not have been in vain. Thank you.

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