José Cutileiro

José Pires Cutileiro (20 November 1934 – 17 May 2020) was a Portuguese diplomat and writer. He was a representative to the Council of Europe, Secretary General of the Western European Union (WEU), and an envoy 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, José Jacinto Cutileiro, 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.

Studies and academic career

Back in Portugal, Cutileiro studied architecture and medicine at the Technical University of Lisbon and at the Classical University of Lisbon. He then went to Oxford University getting a degree in anthropology in 1964, his PhD in 1968, and became a Research Fellow of St. Antony's College from 1968 to 1971. From 1971 to 1974 he taught social anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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

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. 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.

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 UN Commissioner for Human Rights in 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.

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”.

Works A Portuguese Rural Society [Ricos e pobres no Alentejo. Uma sociedade portuguesa rural]. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971, Situation of human rights in parts of south-eastern Europe : report of the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Geneva : UN, 8 January 2002, OCLC 83338101 Life and death of others: the international community and the end of Yugoslavia [Vida e morte dos outros : a comunidade internacional e o fim da Jugoslávia], Lisboa, Portugal : Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2003, Bilhetes de Colares: 1982-1998 [writing as A. B. Kotter], Assírio & Alvim, Lisbon 2007 (in Portuguese),

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)