Post-war Diplomatic Career
Right after the end of World War II Velebit continued his diplomatic activity.
In the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia's provisionary government that got formed on the basis of British-brokered Treaty of Vis and later the Belgrade Agreement, he was the deputy to the Foreign Affairs Minister. He then became one of the chief members of the secret Yugoslav diplomatic mission to Washington, negotiating the terms and scope of the American help to Yugoslavia. After returning home to the country that was in the meantime re-constituted as a Stalinist communist state called Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, he became deputy to Foreign Affairs Minister Stanoje Simić. In that role, Velebit negotiated with the Allies during the Trieste Crisis.
In March 1948, after Soviet accusation that he was a British spy, Velebit was forced into resigning his post at the Yugoslav Foreign Affairs Ministry and got moved to the Tourist and Service Industry Committee. During the 1948 Cominform resolution and the fallout of subsequent Tito-Stalin split, Velebit was on more than one occasion cited by the Soviets as a spy who works for the British.
In 1951, Velebit became Yugoslav ambassador to Italy, while a year later he got the same job in the United Kingdom. During March 1953, he prepared Tito's first official state visit to a Western country. Tito thus became the first communist leader to visit the UK.
In 1960, on invitation from the United Nations general-secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, Velebit became executive secretary at the UN European Economic Commission (UNECE) in Geneva. He performed this job up until his retirement in 1967. Known in Western circles as a skilled diplomat, his last assignment was as an emissary of the Carnegie Foundation in the Isreli-Palestinian conflict.
In the early 1990s during the Yugoslav breakup and the beginning stages of the Yugoslav Wars, Velebit moved from London to Zagreb due to nationalist threats. Once back he divided his time between Zagreb and Mali Lošinj.
During retirement he wrote two books 1983's Sećanja (Memories) and 2002's Tajne i zamke Drugog svetskog rata (World War II's Secrets and Traps).
He died on 29 August 2004 at the Rebro clinical center in Zagreb. He was buried at the city's Mirogoj Cemetery on 3 September 2004.
Vladimir Velebit is mentioned in the 2009 book A Rat Hole to be Watched by American historian Coleman Armstrong Mehta as the point of contact between Frank Wisner (head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Plans) and Yugoslav communist government during the early 1950s. Wisner apparently contacted Velebit because he was known to be the leading proponent of the idea that Yugoslav state should be oriented towards the West. According to Mehta's book that's based upon recently declassified American intelligence documents, the Wisner-Velebit contact, which occurred in the wake of Tito-Stalin split, eventually resulted in intelligence cooperation agreement between the United States and Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The agreement enabled the Americans to get their hands on recently developed and deployed MiG-15 Soviet fighter plane, which was delivered to them by the Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav government in 1951.
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