Diego Arria

Diego Arria
President of the United Nations Security Council
In office 1 March 1992 – 31 March 1992
Permanent Representative of Venezuela in the United Nations
In office 11 March 1991 – August 1993
President	Carlos Andrés Pérez
Succeeded by	Adolfo Raul Taylhardat
Minister of Information and Tourism
In office February 1977[1] – 17 March 1978[1]
President	Carlos Andrés Pérez
Succeeded by	Celestino Armas
Governor of Caracas, Capital District
In office 15 March 1974[2] – February 1977[3]
President	Carlos Andrés Pérez
Preceded by	Guillermo Alvarez Bajarez[4]
Succeeded by	Manuel Montilla Caceres[4]
President of the Corporación Nacional de Hotelería y Turismo (CONAHOTU)
In office 12 March 1969 – 2 February 1974
President	Rafael Caldera
Personal details
Born	(1938-10-08) 8 October 1938 Caracas, Venezuela
Nationality	Venezuela
Relations	Divorced 2012
Alma mater	University of Michigan
Religion	Catholic

Diego Enrique Arria Salicetti (born 8 October 1938 - Caracas, Venezuela^[5]), doctor of economics, is a Venezuelan politician, diplomat, former Venezuelan Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations (1991–1993) and President of the Security Council (March 1992). He was Governor of the Federal District of Caracas in the mid-1970s. Other positions have included Diplomatic Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.^[6] He was said to be one of the "twelve apostles" (a group of powerful men close to the Presidency) of Carlos Andrés Pérez' first presidency.^[7] Arria was also a critic of former President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.^[8]

Background

Arria was schooled partly in Caracas and partly at the Augusta Military Academy at Fort Defiance, Virginia. He obtained a degree in economic and political science from the University of Michigan.^[9] Arria then studied at the London School of Economics, and worked for the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. until he returned to Venezuela in 1969, initially as Director of Tourism in Rafael Caldera's Ministry of Development, and later as president of the CONAHOTU (National Corporation of Hotels and Tourism).^[10]

Political career

Arria resigned as head of CONAHOTU in order to support the presidential candidacy of Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP) in 1973. Shortly after CAP was elected in March 1974, he appointed Arria Governor of the Federal District (Caracas),^[2] at a time when this was one of the most important presidential appointments.^[11] In 1976 when he was Governor of the Federal District he went to Chile and asked President Pinochet to release his friend Orlando Letelier; which Pinochet did, but soon after this Letelier was murdered with a car bomb in Washington D.C by Pinochet's order.^[12] He subsequently moved from the governorship to become Minister of Information and Tourism in February 1977.^[1][3][13] He resigned on 17 March 1978, in order to stand as an independent candidate in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1978;^[1] he came fourth with 1.7% of the votes.^[14] As part of his campaign Arria initiated the launch of the daily newspaper El Diario de Caracas.

In 2012 Arria was a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Coalition for Democratic Unity for the Venezuelan presidential election, 2012. Primary elections were held on February 12, 2012, with Henrique Capriles Radonski winning the nomination.

United Nations

Arria was Venezuelan Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations from 1991 to 1993,^[15][16] and was President of the Security Council (March 1992),^[17] during Venezuela's membership of the Security Council. Arria later became Special Advisor to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN,^[6] He initiated the eponymous 'Arria formula'^[18] a very informal consultation process which affords members of the Security Council the opportunity to hear persons in a confidential, informal setting. These meetings are presided over by a member of the Council as service facilitator for the discussion and not by the President of the Council. Arria has described this formula as a way of ensuring that members 'have to be honest'.^[19] He was chairman during the massacres at Srebrenica. After visiting the enclave he warned of its impending doom and predicted the massacres saying it was "slow motion Genocide" and the besieged enclave itself as "a concentration camp policed by UNPROFOR".^[20]

Other

Other positions have included Diplomatic Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.^[6] He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of the Americas^[21] and of Freedom Now,^[22] and of the Board of Advisors of Inter-American Dialogue.^[23] He has been a Director at The Columbus Group, and is currently the Chairman of the Advisory Board at Athelera LLC as well as a Member of the Board of Advisors at VMS Associates, LLC.^[24]

In November 2011, Arria filed charges for crimes against humanity against Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.^[8]

Ranch expropriation

La Carolina taken by Diego Arria one month before the expropriation, according to Arria.

On April 30, 2010, Arria's ranch "La Carolina" in Yaracuy State was taken over by the Venezuelan government. Minister of Agriculture Elias Jaua "declared that lawyers and historians working for the National Lands Institute (INTI) ha[d] not been able to find continuity of ownership deeds in the national register and therefore the lands are "fallow" and return to the State".^[25] According to government officials the ranch was unproductive and was a case of idle lands; according to Arria, the farm had 300 cattle and 90% of it was under some form of agricultural development.^[26] When becoming aware of the expropriation threat Dr. Arria took photos of the farm and the cattle and posted them on the Internet, including the one used to illustrate this paragraph. Correo del Orinoco, a state-owned newspaper, reporting their claims that Arria's declarations about expropriation and loot by the Ministry of Agriculture are "subversive and tend to urge the homicide of Hugo Chavez".^[27] According to Arria, the expropriation was a reaction to Arria's participation in the Oslo Freedom Forum, where he stated that Chavez will have to face International Justice one day for his "crimes" against the Venezuelan people.^[28] He has since described the ranch's seizure as 'pillaging and ransacking'.^[19]

Assassination accusations

On May 28, 2014, a top Venezuelan government official, Jorge Rodriguez, presented evidence of an alleged plot by opposition politicians and officials, including Diego Arria, to overthrow the government of the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The evidence provided by the Venezuelan government included alleged emails through Google addressed to Arria from both Maria Corina Machado and Pedro Burelli.^[29] Burelli responded, stating that the emails were falsified by SEBIN, showing what he said were the original emails.^[30][31] Along with Burelli's explanation, Arria also said that his iPhone had been stolen which was supposedly used to access his email and social networking accounts to fabricate messages that had not been written by him.^[32] On June 4, Venezuela's attorney general Luisa Ortega Díaz subpoenaed Arria, along with María Corina Machado, Pedro Burelli and Ricardo Koesling;^[33] one week later, on June 11, warrants were issued for their arrest.^[34] From Miami, Arria responded by declaring "I'm innocent and those charges are absolutely false".^[35] Weeks later, Burelli hired Kivu, a U.S.-based cybersecurity company, with Kivu performing an analysis of the alleged emails covered in the Venezuelan government's report, stating that there was "no evidence of the existence of any emails between Pedro Burelli's Google email accounts and the alleged recipients", that the alleged emails had "many indications of user manipulation", and that "Venezuelan officials used forged emails to accuse government adversaries of plotting to kill President Nicolas Maduro".^{[36][37][38][39]}

References