Japanese diplomat and academic, Sadako Ogata, was eventually appointed to the post of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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Virendra Dayal
United Nations days.
In 1979, he was appointed as the director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, and three years later, he became Chef de Cabinet to Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations. 
 As Chef de Cabinet, Dayal was given the rank of an under-secretary-general and he attended several diplomatic conferences including the 8th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Harare in 1988. He continued at the post during the tenure of the next secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, until his retirement from UN service in 1993. It was during Boutros-Ghali's incumbency that Dayal assisted the secretary-general in preparing "An Agenda for Peace: Preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peace-keeping", which was presented at the Summit Meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992. He was also involved in two diplomatic missions to South Africa, accompanying Cyrus Vance, former United States Secretary of State in July 1992 and then visiting the country as Special Envoy of the Secretary-General in September 1992. On these diplomatic missions, he met F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela a number of times as a part of the negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa which were reported to have helped in arranging a meeting of the two leaders and in the eventual transition of power through the South African general elections of 1994. 
 In 1990, Dayal was proposed to become United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees by the UN secretary-general, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, but, Dayal's nomination was blocked by the United States due to opposition from Ronald Reagan, the country's president. On this Dayal commented:
