José Cutileiro

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José Pires Cutileiro
Born(1934-11-20)20 November 1934
Évora, Portugal
Died17 May 2020(2020-05-17) (aged 85)
Brussels, Belgium
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
Academic work
InstitutionsInstitute for Advanced Study

José Cutileiro (20 November 1934 – 17 May 2020) was a Portuguese diplomat and writer. He was a representative to the

UN Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. He was on the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
.

Biography

Early life and family

Cutileiro's father, a republican and secularist doctor, faced political problems with the Salazar regime, and chose to leave the country to join the World Health Organization (WHO), taking his wife and children, then teenagers, to live in Switzerland, India and Afghanistan. In 1952 they were the first Portuguese citizens, of which there is record, to live in Afghanistan. Cutileiro was then 17 years old.[1]

José is the brother of the famous sculptor João Cutileiro.[1]

His son, also named José Cutileiro, was born in Lisbon in 1959. When he was 18 years old moved to the Netherlands. He was a musician, journalist and writer. In the 1980s he started as guitarist in the band “De Ziffels” in Groningen, the Netherlands. From 2000 he was television and radio reporter for regional broadcaster OOG. He died on 22 June 2020, after being ill for a long time, aged 61. His death was a month after the death of his father.[2][3]

Studies and academic career

Back in Portugal, Cutileiro studied architecture and medicine at the

London School of Economics and Political Science.[4]

From September 2001 to June 2004 Cutileiro was the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.[5]

Diplomatic career

With the

carnation revolution, Cutileiro was invited by Mário Soares to enter the diplomatic service, having started by being a cultural attaché of the Portuguese embassy in London.[1]

From 1974 to 1994 Cutileiro worked for the

OSCE Conference on Disarmament in Stockholm from 1984 to 1986.[4]

In 1988 he negotiated the accession of Portugal to the

Conference on Yugoslavia, he presided over talks on future constitutional arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina.[6]
Several plans were proposed before and during the Bosnian War by the
European Community and the United Nations. Cutileiro was co-author of the Carrington–Cutileiro plan, sometimes known as the Lisbon Agreement, in February 1992, an attempt to prevent Bosnia-Herzegovina sliding into war.[7]

From 1994 to 1999 he was Secretary-General of the Western European Union, at that time the only European defense organization. In 1999, it was agreed that the holder of the newly created post of High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union should also be the Secretary-General of the WEU. Thus, Cutileiro was the last independent general secretary of this institution and was succeeded by Javier Solana.

From 2001 to 2003 he served as a Special Envoy of the

Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia
.

He served as adviser for the Portuguese presidency of the EU Council and, in 2005, as special political advisor to

José Manuel Durão Barroso as president of the European Commission.[1]

Writing career

As a writer, Cutileiro is best known for a fictionalized history written under the pseudonym A. B. Kotter. Kotter is supposedly an elitist expatriate English aristocrat living in Colares with his pro-fascist mother. The stories describe their experiences living in post-revolutionary Portugal. These chronicles were serialized in the British newspaper The Independent between 1993 and 1998 and were collected into the book Bilhetes de Colares in 2004.[8]

Cutileiro wrote essays, poetry books and other works of an anthropological nature, the most recent publication being the “Inventário: Desabafos e Divagações de Um Sético”.[1]

He also wrote obituaries for the

Maria de Jesus and Fidel Castro. In the last years he also held an international relations column entitled 'The World of Others'.[1]

Death

Cutileiro died at a hospital in Brussels on 17 May 2020.[1]

Works

Awards and honors

  • Ordem Militar de Cristo
  • Order of Prince Henry
  • Portuguese Order of Christ
  • 2009 Grande Prémio de Crónica from the Portuguese Writers Association for his fictional chronicle Bilhetes de Colares (writing under his pseudonym A B Kotter)[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Morreu o embaixador José Cutileiro (in Portuguese)
  2. ^ "Muzikant en schrijver José Cutileiro (61) overleden". 23 June 2020.
  3. ^ Veelzijdig veelweter José Cutileiro (1959 - 2020) uit Groningen overleden
  4. ^ a b Curriculum vitae of José Cutileiro at Portuguese Institute of International Relations Archived 11 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine, May 2003
  5. ^ Institute For Advanced Study Appoints Cutileiro To Kennan Professorship
  6. ISBN 1443847569
  7. ISBN 030016629X
  8. ^ Expresso Decade of books: A. B. Kotter, "Bilhetes de Colares", Independente, 2004, "One of the best Portuguese writers is the chronicler AB Kotter, a pseudonym of José Cutileiro".(in Portuguese)
  9. ^ "Wook Books blog: Bilhetes de Colares by A. B. Kotter". Archived from the original on 7 April 2016. Retrieved 24 March 2016.

External links

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