He derails trains of thought, discomfits the orthodox, and disrupts debate. But he may also be responsible for preventing untold numbers of colleagues from dying of sheer boredom. What is more, he knows the ropes at the United Nations General Assembly better than anybody else, for he has been there since its first meeting in 1946. He is Jamil M. Baroody, 66, a Lebanese-born New Yorker who is Saudi Arabia's U.N. representative.
Unguided Missile. Because the oil-rich Saudis need hardly anything in the way of aid from the U.N. and Baroody has King Feisal's total confidence, he is probably freer than any other diplomat to say exactly what he thinks. Which he does, interminably. A slightly stooped, balding man with an appreciative eye for a well-turned leg, he has a point of order for every occasion, and when colleagues show annoyance at his interruptions, he faces them down with a schoolmaster's glare. During the recent debate on the admission of China, he overheard one diplomat say that Baroody should be thrown out instead of the Chinese Nationalists. Baroody promptly reported the conversation from the podium, blithely breaking a house rule against revealing private conversations in public. During the same debate, Baroody, who strongly supported the U.S., managed to call for a vote at precisely the wrong moment, allowing the pro-Peking countries to muster their forces before the U.S. was ready for a showdown. Exasperated, U.S. Ambassador George Bush described Baroody as "an unguided missile."
Others dismiss him as a jester, a clown or worse. Yet somehow, Baroody occasionally comes across as the one sane man at a mad tea party. He was the only delegate, for example, to bring up the embarrassing point that on the very day the U.N. was beginning a debate on disarmament, the newly admitted Peking regime had chosen to detonate a nuclear bomb. At a loss for an answer, the hapless Chinese delegate replied simply: "I denounce you." Baroody shot back: "This 'denounce'—this is no way to explain your case." Afterward Baroody shrugged: "Someone has to put them in their place."
Big Moment. Baroody is a mass of conflicting nationalities and interests. His family is half-Christian and half-Moslem; though he represents the most orthodox Moslem country in the world, he is a Christian. He can deliver anti-Western diatribes with as much vigor and vitriol as a 1950s Pravda editorial, yet he has an American wife and his four children received U.S. educations. A product of the American University in Beirut, Baroody has been a friend of King Feisal since their youth. He supervised the education abroad of the King's seven sons, and is reputedly adviser on the royal investments in the U.S.