UN Commissioner For Namibia
On 1 July 1987 Carlsson was appointed an Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the UN Commissioner for Namibia. On 28 September 1987 Carlsson was interviewed in the World In Action TV documentary The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds when he warned that the UN would take action against those who were illegally exploiting Namibia's natural resources. A year later, he convened a meeting in Stockholm between the SWAPO leadership (Sam Nujoma, Hage Geingob and Hidipo Hamutenya), and a delegation of "whites" from Namibia to discuss developments in the independence process.
Namibia's independence had been expected to take place soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 was agreed in September 1978. However, it took over 10 years for UNSCR 435 to be implemented. The delay was blamed by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens on Chester Crocker's 'procrastination' and on President Ronald Reagan's 'attempt to change the subject to the presence of Cuban forces in Angola' as well as the 'flagrant bias' in America's Namibia policy in favour of apartheid South Africa. Hitchens praised Carlsson's role as a 'neutral mediator' in the process leading to Namibia's independence:
An important participant was Bernt Carlsson, UN Commissioner for Namibia, who worked tirelessly for free elections in the colony and tried to isolate the racists diplomatically. Carlsson had been Secretary-General of the Socialist International, and International Secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. He performed innumerable services for movements and individuals from Eastern Europe to Latin America. His death in the mass murder of the passengers on Pan American Flight 103 just before Christmas 1988, and just before the signing of the Namibia accords in New York, is appalling beyond words.
An editorial in The Guardian of 23 December 1988 stated:
Two days before Christmas, two tides flow strongly. One – the greater tide – is the tide of peace. More nagging, bloody conflicts have been settled in 1988 than in any year since the end of the Second World War. There are forces for good abroad in the world as seldom before. There is also a tide of evil, a force of destruction. By just one of those ironies which afflict the human condition, peace came to Namibia yesterday. Meanwhile, on a Scottish hillside, the body of the Swedish UN Commissioner for Namibia was one amongst hundreds strewn across square miles of debris: a victim – supposition, but strongly based – of a random terrorist bomb which had blown a 747 to bits at 31,000 feet."
Ten years were to elapse until the Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev summit of the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union in Moscow (29 May 1988 – 1 June 1988), finally secured the implementation of UNSCR 435, which would require South Africa to relinquish its control of Namibia.
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