A Foreign Minister who remained embedded in the UN landscape

UNITED NATIONS – When Foreign Minister ACS Hameed came under attack for staying in five-star luxury hotels during the UN General Assembly sessions in New York, he fired back at the Opposition MP in Parliament with a rejoinder dripping with sarcasm: “Where do you want me to stay when I travel overseas?”, he asked. “in thosai boutiques?”

To put it in perspective, that would be like rooming at the Ambal Café in Hulftsdorf or Saraswathie Lodge in Bambalapitya. Or perhaps Saravanaa Bhavan in New York’s Lexington Avenue.

Hameed routinely pitched his tent either at New York’s Hyatt Regency, the Intercontinental Barclay, the Waldorf Astoria or the Palace Hotel—and he did it in style, like scores of other high-flying Foreign Ministers arriving for the UN sessions, come September. A globe-trotter of near-biblical proportions, he was probably in Colombo only on transit, in between catching overseas flights.

Hameed, whose 17th death anniversary was commemorated September 3, was an unforgettable character in his heyday— enjoying every single moment of his tenure as Foreign Minister. As a former Sri Lankan Ambassador, who worked closely with Hameed, told me: “Hameed was not a great reader but had an intuitive knowledge of international affairs, rather like Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike”.

With Sri Lanka holding the chairmanship of the NonAligned Movement (NAM) during 1976-1979, Hameed was constantly called upon to preside over some of the thorniest international issues of the 1970s: which of the two Cambodian factions had the rightful claim to the seat at the UN (the General Assembly session that day was held up for over four hours as he negotiated behind closed doors trying to resolve the dispute with backing from the UN’s Legal Adviser)? Was it Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge regime (19751979)?And should Egypt, which had signed the Camp David peace agreement with Israel in 1978, be driven out of NAM?There was also sharp divisions in NAM over the disputed territory of Western Sahara in the Maghreb region of North Africa and the split over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989).

As he sat in judgement, Hameed’s closest advisers during the General Assembly sessions included two career diplomats, Jayantha Dhanapala and Nihal Rodrigo, along with Ernest Corea, a former editor of the Daily News and later Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to the United States. Ernest was a longstanding friend,having known Hameed long before he became Foreign Minister, and was the only Sri Lankan Ambassador who addressed him by his first name: Shahul, throwing protocol to the winds.

As Ernest told me last week: “Shahul faced many challenges in his life – one of them was a lack of physical height – but his biggest challenge was managing the Foreign Affairs portfolio for the Sri Lanka government.”

“To the best of my recollection, he was the first Foreign Minister to hold that portfolio without the direct involvement of the Prime Minister’s/President’s office”. Previously, Defence and External Affairs were hitched together.

When President Jayewardene unhitched them, there was a fairly widespread perception, particularly in Colombo’s foreign policy establishment, that the whole business of foreign affairs was being downgraded. “Shahul proved them wrong”, said Ernest who lives in retirement in Virginia.

With President Jayewardena never setting foot at the UN— a self-imposed, unexplained boycott of the world body-- Hameed was in all his political glory as he faithfully made his annual pilgrimage to the General Assembly sessions. As part of the landscape in the UN Delegate’s Lounge, Hameed was seen holding court, even as he kept chomping at his cigar, probably the best from Cuba, which he picked up in Havana during his frequent trips to the Cuban capital before Sri Lanka handed over the NAM chairmanship to Fidel Castro in 1979.

At home, Hameed had a tough task steering the NAM ship among sceptics like Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali, and of course, JRJ himself. Still, Hameed showed remarkable patience and persistence. Perhaps his most joyous moment as Foreign Minister was when JRJ told Fidel Castro at the Havana summit that it was Hameed who enabled Sri Lanka to hand over NAM’s leadership to Cuba “untarnished and unaltered,” said Ernest who was in Havana for the handing over ceremony.

This put to rest the speculation even within his own party that his days as Foreign Minister would be short. “The fact is that JRJ realized as few others did that Shahul had an intuitive feel for international relations. Those who had the privilege of working with him understood this. He had his faults. Who doesn’t?,” said Ernest.

“I am not going to be counted among his critics who might want to let fly at him now that he is no longer with us. Rather, I would like to remind those of us who worked with him and others who observed him at work that he was outstanding in several areas”.

First he was tri-lingual in English, Sinhala and Tamil. This gave him a remarkable reputation among his peers. Second, he had a phenomenal memory and could at precisely the correct moment during a drafting session pull out from the recesses of his mind a word, a phrase or other salient reference that added substance and depth to a public policy statement. He was also insistent, as some of his colleagues were not, that a solid Sri Lanka/India relationship was an essential component of foreign policy, said Ernest.

“One more point needs to be stressed and this is very personal. He was an excellent extempore speaker. He could intervene in a debate to deal with a complex issue for which most of us were unprepared as if he was saying to himself: “Here’s that loose ball I was waiting for.”

Armed with self-deprecating humour, Hameed funded the publication of a collection of cartoons that lampooned him. He particularly relished a cartoon which showed him sitting before a huge globe with the caption: "Let me see - what are the coun- tries I have still not visited." An equally lovable cartoon in November 1978 showed a world-weary Hameed arriving at the Katunayake airport and innocently asking a passer-by: "My dear man, could you show me the way to Harispattuwa?," his electorate in his hometown of Akurana. His initials ACS were spelled out as “All Countries Seen.”

The cartoons were sketches from some of Sri Lanka's celebrated artistes of the 1970s, including W.R.Wijesoma, JiffreyYoonoos, Mark Gerreyn and Amita Abayesekera."One of the greatest gifts is the ability to laugh at oneself," said Wijesoma in an introduction to the book titled "Mr Foreign Minister", " Mr Hameed is doing just that, and I believe he is having the last laugh."

Oscar Wilde once made the distinction between two forms of torture: the rack and the Press. Ask any politician, said Hameed, and he would opt for the grisly torture chamber over the editorial offices and the news desks in Colombo.

Hameed hailed from Akuruna and his electorate was Harispattuwa: a majority Sinhala Buddhist electorate. And to have been elected over a very long period was a tribute to Hameed’s political relationship among his voters.

One of Hameed's memorable moments was when an Eelam activist/lawyer from London, Krishna Vaikunthavasan, surreptitiously gate-crashed into the UN, took his place in the speakers roster, and tried to upstage Hameed by walking onto the podium of the General Assembly and unleashing a diatribe against the government accusing it of genocide.

When the president of the Assembly realized he had an interloper on his hands, he cut off the mike within minutes and summoned security guards to bodily eject the intruder from the hall. And as Hameed walked up to the podium, there was pin drop silence in the Assembly Hall.

But the unflappable Hameed, unprompted by any of his delegates, produced a riveting punchline: "I want to thank the previous speaker for keeping his speech short," he said, as the Assembly, known to tolerate longwinded and boring speeches, broke into peals of laughter. The writer can be contacted

at thalifdeen@aol.com