José Maurício Bustani
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José Maurício Bustani is a Brazilian diplomat, of Lebanese extraction, who was the director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons until he was ousted after an April 2002 falling out with the US government. He was Ambassador of Brazil to the United Kingdom between 2003 and 2008 and is currently Ambassador of Brazil to France.
Bustani was born in 1945 in Porto Velho, Brazil. He received his law degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in 1967, and attended the Brazilian diplomatic school in the same year, after which he joined the Brazilian foreign service.
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[edit] Director General of the OPCW
Bustani was appointed director general of the OPCW in 1997. His four-year term was due to expire in 2001. However, he was unanimously reelected to this position (with considerable US support) one year early, in May 2000. This gave him a new four-year term running from 2001-2005.
[edit] Removal from Office
Soon after, Bustani fell out of favour with the US, who now began to lobby aggressively for Bustani’s removal, in a campaign orchestrated by John Bolton.[1] Finally, at the behest of John R. Bolton the US ambassador to the OPCW a special meeting was held in The Hague on Sunday, April 21, 2002. Following what are reputed to have been both secretive and very tempestuous deliberations, a vote was held, with Bustani’s removal being carried by a vote of 48-6, with 43 abstentions. This was the first time in history that the head of a major international organization was removed during his/her term of office.
There is much controversy surrounding the reasons behind Bustani’s removal. The US administration claimed that Bustani’s position was no longer tenable, stating three main reasons: “polarizing and confrontational conduct”, “mismanagement issues” and “advocacy of inappropriate roles for the OPCW”.
Meanwhile, supporters of Bustani see very different motives behind his removal. Bustani had been negotiating with the Iraqi regime, and was hoping to persuade them to sign up to the OPCW, thus granting OPCW inspectors full access to Iraq’s purported chemical arsenal. If Bustani had succeeded, this would have placed a formidable obstacle in the path of the Bush administration’s war plans. For Bustani’s supporters, this was the reason why the US forced him out.
They also claim that the US ambassador issued threats against OPCW members in order to coerce them to support the US initiative against Bustani, including the withdrawal of US support for the organization. To put it short, it has been said that Bustani was bullied out from the OPCW by John Bolton - something that at least appears coherent with what was said about Mr. Bolton's practices during the US Senate hearings prior to his appointment as American ambassador to the United Nations Organization.
Whatever the real reasons behind Bustani’s removal from office, it was both surprising, given the previous support he enjoyed from the US, and utterly unique. Bustani filed a complaint with the International Labour Organization Administrative Tribunal, which a year later set aside the dismissal decision, and provided moral as well as material financial compensation to Bustani; Bustani did not seek reinstatement.[2]
According to the Statement of the Delegation of Brazil.[3], on the IX Conference of States Parties to the CWC on December 3, 2004, he donated 100% of his compensation International Cooperation programmes of the OPCW. A letter of Ambassador Bustani regarding this donation and comments about the final Judgementof the ILOAT on the issue of his removal can be found in a National Paper distributed by Brazil, document C-9/NAT.1, dated 13 August, 2004.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Arresting John Bolton", George Monbiot. Retrieved on 2008-05-28.
- ^ Judgment 2232 - ILO Administrative Tribunal
- ^ Statement of the Delegation of Brazil in PDF
