The New York Times eulogizes Sergio Vieira de Mello. I, like many people, tend to focus on the UN's shortcomings. It's worth remembering its strengths, among them that it attracts people like Vieira de Mello.

"Vieira de Mello was the man his colleagues believed could transform hopeless situations into hopeful ones and negotiate cease-fires at the height of genocidal wars. He was the United Nations' chief civilian representative in Bosnia in 1993 and its humanitarian coordinator in the Great Lakes region of Africa after the Rwandan genocide of 1994. When NATO expelled Serb forces from Kosovo in 1999, it was Vieira de Mello who was given the task of organizing the first transitional structures in what would prove to be an open-ended U.N./NATO protectorate in the breakaway Yugoslav province. And after the Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor in 1999, Vieira de Mello was named head of the U.N.'s transitional authority there. He had a seemingly miraculous knack for sitting down with mortal enemies and reconciling their seemingly irreconcilable positions. As one European diplomat put it after his murder, 'Sergio was a man who could go into the foulest situation and come out smelling like a rose.' ...

"Vieira de Mello apparently believed in the United Nations as it saw itself, the U.N. at its best -- poor in resources but rich in dedication; badly served by its member states, above all the most powerful among them, but nonetheless able, against all the odds, to bring savage wars to a speedier end while alleviating the suffering of the innocent victims of these conflicts; and offering hope and a bedrock of humanitarian principle in a world of power politics, ethnic conflict and Realpolitik."