LONDON — This was to be Sergio Vieira de Mello’s dream come true: helping a major Arab country become a modern democracy.

De Mello, the United Nations’ special representative in Baghdad, did not live long enough to see his dream come true. On Tuesday a car bomb destroyed Hotel Canal, the UN headquarters in Baghdad. De Mello was among the 24 people killed.

The Brazilian diplomat, his mood always as sunny as his tanned face, knew that Iraq was a difficult case. It was a society emerging from more than three decades of violence and war under some of the most brutal regimes ever seen in Arab history. Nevertheless, after a two months spell in Baghdad, he had been totally charmed by the Iraqis.

“These people deserve the best,” he told me in a telephone conversation last July. “All that Iraq needs is a decent chance: It now has that chance.”

De Mello had a long experience of what is known in international circles as “nation-building”, that is to say taking a war-shattered country and transforming it into a working polity.

De Mello played the central role in Cambodia, as it emerged from decades of war and savage rule by the Khmer Rouge gangsters. He did not succeed in turning Cambodia into a modern democracy. But the least that one can say is that Cambodia has been put on the path of democratic development.

De Mello was also involved in East Timor, a largely Catholic enclave that had suffered from years of violence under Indonesian occupation. Today, the Brazailian is among East Timor’s national heroes. This is thanks to his patient efforts to put down the flames of revenge and focus people’s attention on the future.

Had he not been so tragically slain, De Mello was well in line to succeed Kofi Annan as secretary-general of the United Nations. Before that he was preparing to take over the position of UN high commissioner for human rights in just two weeks time.

De Mello’s Iraq mission was already a success. He had managed to establish a personal relationship with L. Paul Bremer, the US-led coalition’s interim administrator for Iraq. It was partly thanks to De Mello’s quiet diplomacy that Bremer agreed to speed up the formation of the Governing Council and to give it extensive powers. That move, in turn, paved the way for the Security Council resolution that welcomed the formation of the Governing Council, thus bestowing it on it a wider measure of legitimacy.

During the past few weeks many members of he Governing Council had learned to rely on De Mello to understand their concerns and to exert pressure on the Americans to take the measures needed.

According to Bremer, De Mello had been a target for assassination since he first arrived in Iraq last June.

De Mello is not the first senior UN official to be brutally killed.

In 1948 Zionist extremists murdered the Swedish Count Bernadotte who represented the UN in Palestine. In 1961 it was the turn of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskj?ld to be kidnapped and murdered in the Congo.

The question is : Who wanted De Mello, a man of peace, to die?

Some so-called experts have suggested that the UN headquarters was attacked by those Iraqis who are still angry at the UN’s failure to approve a resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein by force. That theory, however, does not stand up to close examination.

The majority of Iraqis who wished to see the end of Saddam do not wish to see their country plunged into an infernal cycle of violence.

A more likely theory is that those who wish to plunge Iraq into chaos and thus prevent the speedy emergence of an Iraqi government were behind the attack.

After every crime, the key question is : Who will profit from it?

In this case the only groups likely to profit are the nihilists who believe that they can halt the inevitable march of Iraq toward normalization. Even the supporters of Saddam Hussein are unlikely to benefit from the attack.

This is because the only way the remnants of the Baath may have a chance in Iraq is for the UN to assume a more effective role in shaping the future of the country. By driving the UN out, the Baathist leftover will find itself face to face with the US-led coalition and the majority of Iraqis who are thirsty for revenge against the former regime.

Whatever the motives behind the attack it is unlikely that it will have a lasting impact. On the contrary it may raise the stakes for the United States, making the Bush administration far more determined to impose its will on Iraq.

One thing is certain: The clock of history will not be turned back in Iraq.

- Arab News Opionion 21 August 2003