Francesc Vendrell obituary
Effective United Nations peace negotiator who brought about dialogue between warring parties in many international crises
Francesc Vendrell, who has died aged 82, was one of the longest serving and most successful United Nations peace negotiators of modern times. He helped to promote the disbanding of the CIA-backed “contras” in 1989 who were terrorising parts of Nicaragua in a campaign to overthrow the Sandinista government. He held secret meetings with the Cuban president, Fidel Castro, while brokering a deal between the rightwing US-supported government of El Salvador and the nationalist guerrilla movement, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, which led to a ceasefire and free elections in 1992.
He played a major role in ending Indonesia’s bloody occupation of East Timor and organising a referendum for independence in 1999. For the next two years, as the UN secretary general’s envoy to Afghanistan, Vendrell launched the first contacts between the Taliban government and the Northern Alliance of regional warlords.
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