A globe-trotter of near-biblical proportions, he was probably in Colombo only on transit, in between catching overseas flights

Hameed was an unforgettable character in his heyday- enjoying every single moment of his tenure as Foreign Minister beginning 1977

Thalif Deen, former UN Bureau Chief for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment- and Don’t Quote Me on That” from which this article is adapted. 
Sri Lanka had its fair share of Foreign Ministers who made their annual visits to the UN during the General Assembly sessions in September when the world body traditionally hosted over 150 world leaders, including heads of state and heads of government. 

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister A.C.S. Hameed had one of his memorable moments when an Eelam activist and lawyer from London, Krishna Vaikunthavasan, surreptitiously gate-crashed into the UN and tried to upstage Hameed by walking onto the podium of the General Assembly hall and momentarily took the speaker’s slot. 
The incident saw the intruder unleashing a diatribe against a member state accusing it of genocide and lambasting the government for committing war crimes against the Tamils fighting for a separate state in Sri Lanka. 

When the president of the Assembly realised he had an interloper on his hands, he cut off the mike and summoned security guards who bodily ejected him from the hall and banned him from the UN premises. When Hameed walked up to the podium there was pin-drop silence. 

As a member of the Sri Lanka delegation at that time, I was seated behind Hameed. But the unflappable Hameed produced a riveting punchline: “Mr. President”: he said “I want to thank the previous speaker for keeping his speech short; “ he said, as the Assembly, known to suffer longwinded speeches, broke into peals of laughter. The intruder was in effect upstaged by Hamid. 

Hameed’s canny sense of humor also went far beyond the confines of the UN. When he came under attack for staying in five-star luxury hotels during the UN General Assembly sessions III New York, he fired back at the Opposition MP in Parliament with a rejoinder dripping with sarcasm: “Where do you want me to stay when J travel overseas as the Foreign Minister?” he asked. “in thosai boutiques?” 

Hameed routinely pitched his tent either at New York’s Hyatt Regency, the Intercontinental Barclay, the Waldorf Astoria or the Palace Hotel-and he did it in style. A globe-trotter of near-biblical proportions, he was probably in Colombo only on transit, in between catching overseas flights. 

Hameed was an unforgettable character in his heyday- enjoying every single moment of his tenure as Foreign Minister beginning 1977. And more so, because President J.R. Jayewerdene (JRJ) never addressed the UN nor stepped into the UN premises. 

Hameed was also insistent, as some of his colleagues were not, that a solid Sri Lanka/India relationship was an essential component of foreign policy

With Sri Lanka holding the chairmanship of the Non- Aligned Movement (NAM) during 1976-1979, Hameed was constantly called upon to preside over some of the thorniest international issues of the mid-1970s: which of the two Cambodian factions had the rightful claim to the seat at the UN? Was it Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge regime (l975-1979)? 

And, in another dispute, should Egypt, which had signed the Camp David peace agreement with Israel in 1978, be driven out of NAM? As he sat in judgement, Hameed’s closest advisers during the General Assembly sessions included two outstanding career 
diplomats, Jayantha Dhanapala and Nihal Rodrigo) along with Ernest Corea, Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Canada and later Ambassador to the United States. 

Ernest was one of Hameed’s longstanding friends, having known him long before he became Foreign Minister, and was the only Sri Lankan Ambassador who addressed him by his first name: Shahul, throwing protocol to the winds. 

As Ernest once told me: “Shahul faced many challenges in his life - one of them was a lack of physical height - but his biggest challenge was managing the Foreign Affairs portfolio for the Government of Sri Lanka. To the best of my recollection, he was the first Foreign Minister to hold that portfolio without the direct involvement of the Prime Minister’s/President’s office”. 

When President Jayewardene unhitched them, there was a widespread perception that the whole business of foreign affairs was being downgraded. “Shahul proved them wrong’: said Ernest. 

At home, Hameed had a tough task steering the NAM ship among sceptics like Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali, and of course, JRJ himself. Still, Hameed showed remarkable patience and persistence. 

Perhaps his most joyous moment as Foreign Minister was when JRJ told Fidel Castro at the Havana summit that it was Hameed who enabled Sri Lanka to hand over NAM’s leadership to Cuba “untarnished and unaltered: “
This put to rest the speculation even within his own party that his days as Foreign Minister would be short. “The fact is that JRJ realised as few others did that Shahul had an intuitive feel for international relations. Those who had the privilege of working with him understood this. He had his faults. Who doesn’t?” asked Ernest. 

First, he was tri-lingual: in English, Sinhala, and Tamil. This gave him a remarkable reputation among his peers. Second, he had a phenomenal memory and could at precisely the correct moment during a drafting session pull out from the recesses of his mind a word, a phrase or other salient reference that added substance and depth to a public policy statement. Hameed was also insistent, as some of his colleagues were not, that a solid Sri Lanka/India relationship was an essential component of foreign policy, said Ernest. 

“One more point needs to be stressed, and this is very personal. He was an excellent extempore speaker. He could intervene in a debate to deal with a complex issue for which most of us were unprepared as if he was saying to himself. “Here’s that loose ball I was waiting for; “ declared Ernest. 

Armed with self-deprecating humour, Hameed funded the publication of a collection of cartoons that lampooned him. He particularly relished a cartoon which showed him sitting before a huge globe with the caption: “Let me see - what are the countries I have still not visited.” His initials ACS were spelled out as “All Countries Seen:’ 

An equally lovable cartoon in November 1978 showed a world-weary Hameed arriving at the Katunayake airport and innocently asking a passer-by: “My dear man, could you show me the way to Harispattuwa?,” his electorate in his hometown or Akurana, a majority Sinhala Buddhist electorate. And to have been elected over a very long period was a tribute to Hameed’s political relationship among his voters. 

The cartoons were sketches from some of Sri Lanka’s celebrated artistes of the 1970s, Including W.R. Wijesoma, Jiffrey Yoonoos, Mark Gerreyn and Amita Abayesekera.”One of the greatest gifts is the ability to laugh at oneself;’ said Wijesoma in an introduction to the book titled “Mr. Foreign Minister”, Mr. Hameed is doing just that, and I believe he is having the last laugh.” Oscar Wilde once made the distinction between two forms of torture: the rack and the Press. Ask any politician, said Hameed, and he would opt for the grisly torture chamber over the editorial offices and the news desks in Colombo.