Giandomenico Picco, the UN envoy who helped end the Iran-Iraq war and obtained the release of Westerners kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon, has died at the age of 75. He was born on 8 October 1948 in Flaibano (Udine).
Picco worked at the United Nations from 1973 to 1992. Picco represented Secretary-General Pérez de Cuéllar in negotiations between New Zealand and France after Greenpeace’s flagship, Rainbow Warrior, was sunk by French intelligence agents in 1985. At the time of its sinking, the ship was protesting French nuclear tests in the Pacific.
The following year, he became the UN negotiator for a truce in the war between Sunni-majority Iraq and Shiite-majority Iran. More than a million people were killed in that conflict, which began when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded his neighbor in 1980. Picco also played a role in Afghanistan, helping facilitate the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces after the invasion of that country by Moscow in 1979.