WASHINGTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) – Bill Richardson, a former US diplomat, congressman, Secretary of Energy and Governor of New Mexico who made his mark on the world stage by winning the release of Americans and others held by various autocratic governments, has died age 75, the Richardson Center for Global Engagement reported Saturday.
Richardson, who in 2008 unsuccessfully submitted his candidacy to become the first Hispanic president of the United States, died in his sleep at his summer home in Chatham, Massachusetts, Richardson Center vice president Mickey Bergman said in a statement.
“The world has lost an advocate for those wrongfully detained abroad, and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend,” Bergman said.
The son of a Mexican mother and an American father, Richardson was a Democratic congressman between 1982 and 1996, and later ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy, both under the presidency of Bill Clinton. Richardson was elected Governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011.
Thanks to his negotiating skills and his personal cordiality, he was able, as an official representative of the United States and as an independent problem solver in private humanitarian missions, to obtain the release of numerous people held in countries such as North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq , Iran and Cuba.
“For me, the first rule of negotiation is that you have to engage personally with your adversary. You have to respect them. You have to know what … makes them tick,” Richardson said in a podcast produced by Foreign Policy magazine. in 2018.
“You have to let the other side save face and find ways for them to get some credit, to get something out of the negotiation, when really all it can be is praise for a humanitarian gesture,” he added.
As governor of New Mexico, he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but dropped out after disappointing results in the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries.
(Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani; editing in Spanish by Carlos Serrano)
Source: Ambito
