Bernt Carlsson

In September 2009, former Labour Member of the European Parliament, Michael McGowan called for an urgent independent inquiry led by the United Nations into the Lockerbie bombing. McGowan wrote that he was personally affected by the crash: "As President of the Development Committee of the European Parliament, I had invited Bernt Carlsson, the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, to call in at Brussels in December 1988. He was on his way back to the United States from Namibia and agreed to address members of the Development Committee, which he did. In Brussels, he spoke about his hopes for an independent Namibia and the end of apartheid in South Africa to a packed meeting of MEPs."

In 2008, to mark the 20th anniversary of the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103, the Socialist International published an article entitled "Remembering Bernt Carlsson". The article quoted from the eulogy given by Sten Andersson (then Sweden's foreign minister) at the January 1989 memorial service in Stockholm. Andersson described Carlsson as:

On 21 December 1998, the Bernt Carlsson memorial stone was laid in the garden of remembrance at the Lockerbie air disaster memorial in the town's Dryfesdale cemetery. The inscription reads:

Ten years were to elapse until the Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev summit of the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union in Moscow (29 May 1988 – 1 June 1988), finally secured the implementation of UNSCR 435, which would require South Africa to relinquish its control of Namibia.

As a comment on Bernt Carlsson's death, in the Lockerbie bombing, an editorial in The Guardian of 23 December 1988 stated:

On 26 December 1988, an obituary to Carlsson, written by his friend Michael Harrington, was published in the Los Angeles Times. The Bernt Carlsson Trust – otherwise known as One World Action – was founded by Glenys Kinnock on 21 December 1989 (the first anniversary of the Lockerbie air disaster) in memory of Carlsson.

On 1 July 1987 Carlsson was appointed an Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the UN Commissioner for Namibia. On 28 September 1987 Carlsson was interviewed in the World In Action TV documentary The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds when he warned that the UN would take action against those who were illegally exploiting Namibia's natural resources. A year later, he convened a meeting in Stockholm between the SWAPO leadership (Sam Nujoma, Hage Geingob and Hidipo Hamutenya), and a delegation of whites from Namibia to discuss developments in the independence process.

Carlsson also pioneered moves towards Middle East peace using the SI's unique position of having Israel's governing Labour Party as a member, and at the same time retaining very good ties with Arab countries and Yasser Arafat's faction in the PLO. Carlsson developed a particularly close relationship with Arafat's right-hand man, Issam Sartawi, who was murdered (allegedly by the Abu Nidal Organization) during an SI conference in Portugal on 10 April 1983. Earlier in 1983, however, in a dispute about what he perceived as the SI president's authoritarian approach, Carlsson rebuked Brandt saying: "this is a Socialist International – not a German International". Following the April 1983 SI congress in Albufeira, Portugal, which Brandt had contentiously decided to relocate the SI's conference from Sydney (due to the protests of newly elected pro-Israeli Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke against the PLO's inclusion), Brandt retaliated by forcing Carlsson to step down.

Carlsson left London and returned to Sweden in 1983 and, for two years, became Palme's special emissary to the Middle East and Africa. Palme entrusted him with an important Middle East role in delicate attempts to negotiate a peace agreement between Iran and Iraq. From 1985 to 1987 Carlsson was head of Nordic Affairs in Sweden's foreign ministry. In 1986 Palme was assassinated.

Namibia's independence had been expected to take place soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 was agreed in September 1978.

In 1976, Carlsson became Secretary-General of Socialist International (SI), based in London, at the same time as former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, assumed the SI presidency. For the next seven years, Carlsson was engaged in extending the SI's influence beyond Europe to Third World countries, channelling money and political support to the struggle for liberation in Southern Africa. When there was a break-in at his London apartment, Carlsson confided to his Canadian SI colleague Robin Sears:

A native of Stockholm, Carlsson joined the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League when he was sixteen, studied economics at Stockholm University and, upon graduation, went into Sweden's foreign ministry. He worked as assistant to the Minister of Commerce in 1967 and was assigned to be international secretary of the ruling Social Democratic Party of Sweden in 1970. Concurrent with his position in the party, Prime Minister Olof Palme appointed him as a special adviser.

Bernt Wilmar Carlsson (21 November 1938 – 21 December 1988) was a Swedish social democrat and diplomat who served as Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations and United Nations Commissioner for Namibia from July 1987 until he died on Pan Am Flight 103, which was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was subsequently convicted of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment.