Word: missioners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...murky at first. Regarded by his U.N. colleagues as an arrogant, hardline Communist apparatchik, Shevchenko clearly had not been moved by a sudden, overwhelming yearning for freedom. Moreover, the move seemingly cut short a brilliant career. First posted to the U.N. in 1963 as a counselor in the Soviet Mission, Shevchenko served in New York for seven years. The Ukrainian-born diplomat then returned to Moscow as an adviser to Foreign Minister Gromyko and reached ambassadorial rank at the unusually early age of 40. In 1973 he was sent back to the U.N. to fill the cushy Under Secretary...
...through his lawyer, Shevchenko maintained that his summons home by Moscow was unacceptable and improper for an independent U.N. official like himself. Some U.N. aides scoffed at this explanation; whenever Shevchenko was late for a meeting, they would say it was because he had stopped off at the Soviet Mission 30 blocks away to get instructions. According to one theory, Shevchenko had been recalled to Moscow as a result of some behind-the-scenes power struggle in the Foreign Ministry that threatened to end his career. With his dreams of further advancement shattered, so the theory went, he defected...
Soviet officials at the U.N., whose own careers will be compromised by Shevchenko's defection, hastened to offer other explanations. Second Secretary Yevgeni Lukyantsev of the Soviet Mission insisted that "Shevchenko had a drinking problem. It is quite possible that the FBI or the CIA caught him." One of Shevchenko's aides at the U.N., Vyacheslav Kuzmin, believed to be the KGB officer who was assigned to keep him under surveillance, asserted that "he is a sick man who must be sent back to Moscow so he can get the medical care he needs." Other U.N. officials speculated...
...troops expected to join the force in Lebanon, about half were in place last week. Their ambitious mission is to restore "peace and security and ensure the return of the effective authority in the area to the government of Lebanon." The aim, in other words, is to give the Lebanese government of President Elias Sarkis a chance to build up its own army, which has only 3,000 men today v. 17,000 before Lebanon's civil war broke out three years ago. If U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim has his way, UNIFIL will gradually be disbanded...
Most Israeli officers remain skeptical about UNIFIL's ability to perform its mission. "If the Palestinians are clever," a top Israeli official told TIME Correspondent David Halevy, "they will move back into the southern area but hold their fire for two to three months. After that, they could use the area as their primary base for terrorist operations against Israel. And we will be stuck with an international force in southern Lebanon that will limit our freedom of operation there...