Arnold Smith

Arnold Cantwell Smith, CH, OC ( born January 18, 1915 in Toronto, Ontario, † February 7, 1994 ) was a Canadian diplomat and former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Biography

Smith began his diplomatic career, first in the service of the British Foreign Office (Foreign Office ) and was in the service in 1940 initially attaché at the embassy in Estonia and then from 1940 to 1943 at the Embassy in Egypt.

In 1943 he joined the Diplomatic Service of Canada and found in the following years, use of the embassies in the Soviet Union, Belgium, Cambodia, and the United Kingdom, at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

Between 1958 and 1961 he was Ambassador to the United Arab Republic until 1963 and then in the Soviet Union. In 1963 he returned to Canada, where he was Deputy Under Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In 1965 he was elected the first Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations. He had barely begun when the connectedness of the Commonwealth has been compromised by the unilateral declaration of sovereignty from Britain by the white minority in Rhodesia this office. In 1970 he was re-elected for a second five -year term. In 1971, the alliance was threatened again when Britain announced arms sales to South Africa. Smith asked Prime Minister Edward Heath sustainable refrain from action and thus ultimately had success. During his last until 1975 tenure there came to other events that were to ordeals for the Alliance: The regime of Idi Amin in Uganda, the civil war in Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh, the exclusion of Singapore from the Malaysian Federation and coups in Ghana, Cyprus, Pakistan and Nigeria. Smith tried to lead " to a full multilateral nature of a lower but still significant British centrism " as General Secretary of the Commonwealth.

He was also a co-founder in 1976 and first chairman of the North - South Institute in Ottawa. For his services he was awarded, among others, in 1976 with the Order of the Companions of Honour and in 1984 with the officer level of the Order of Canada.