Kurt Waldheim

Javier Perez de Cuellar, the two-term United Nations secretary-general who brokered a historic cease-fire between Iran and Iraq in 1988 and who in later life came out of retirement to help re-establish democracy in his Peruvian homeland, has died. He was 100.

After so many rounds of talks and numerous declarations of great success or announcements of breakthroughs, the Cyprus talks train finally came to a very important station. Some claim this will be a make-or-break event, while some act with awareness of the history of the problem, which is now more than half a century old, and say Geneva is not the end of the road.