Per Bengt Magnus Ingemar Rösiö (14 May 1927 – 19 May 2019) was a Swedish

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

and author. He served as Ambassador to 17 countries and authored 20 books, mainly on diplomacy. He is more widely known however for having conducted the Swedish government's inquiry into the death of the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld where he maintained that there was no foul play.

Early life

Rösiö was born on 14 May 1927 in

Åmål Åmål () is a locality and the seat of Åmål Municipality in Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 9,065 inhabitants in 2010. It is situated on the western shore of Vänern. In 2005 Åmål received second prize in the international competition ...

, Sweden, the son of Birger Rösiö, a district veterinarian, and his wife Jonita (née Hedin). He received a Candidate of Law degree from Uppsala University in 1949 and carried out university studies in Dublin, Vienna, The Hague and Paris from 1947 to 1950 before becoming an attaché at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1951.

Career

Rösiö served at the legation in New Delhi in 1953, at the Consulate General in Bombay in 1954 where he was Trade Commissioner from 1955 to 1958 and where he became vice consul in 1957. He was embassy secretary in Beijing from 1958 to 1959 and secretary at the Swedish Foreign Ministry from 1959 to 1961. There Rösiö was secretary of the administration investigation for aid to developing countries in 1960. He was then first vice consul in Léopoldville from 1961 to 1962. Rösiö was administrative director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation from 1962 to 1964, first embassy secretary in Washington, D.C. from 1964 to 1965, United Nations Deputy

Resident Representative A resident representative is the head of a United Nations agency (such as UNDP, UNICEF, WHO) in a given country. As such, the resident representative has the same rank as an ambassador of a foreign state accredited to that country, under the Conv ...

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...

in 1965 and embassy counsellor in Khartoum from 1966 to 1969. He was consul general in Houston from 1969 to 1971 and deputy director at the Foreign Ministry from 1972 to 1973. Rösiö was ambassador in

Jeddah Jeddah ( ), also spelled Jedda, Jiddah or Jidda ( ; ar, , Jidda, ), is a city in the Hejaz region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the country's commercial center. Established in the 6th century BC as a fishing village, Jeddah's pro ...

from 1974 to 1977, ambassador in Islamabad from 1977 to 1979, ambassador in Prague from 1979 to 1981 and ambassador in Kuala Lumpur (also accredited to

Rangoon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

) from 1981 to 1985. He was then consul general in Montreal from 1985 to 1990 when he was appointed regional ambassador for

French-speaking French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...

Central Africa at the Swedish Foreign Ministry. He left the post in 1992. In 1991, following reports in the British press about a Belgian mercenary who claimed he shot down Dag Hammarskjöld's plane on 18 September 1961 (while Rösiö served as consul in Léopoldville), the Swedish government decided to launch a one-man inquiry which was conducted by Rösiö. He pointed out a number of questions in previous reports, but came to the conclusion that the cause of the crash was indisputably pilot error. Claims of the fuselage being riddled with bullet holes were false, a fact to which he could attest since he was one of the first people to inspect the wreckage. He also proved that accounts by mercenaries contained glaring inconsistencies (the fuel tanks of their planes were far too small to cover the distances they claimed). Since the report was submitted in 1993 it has served as Sweden's official stance on what happened in Ndola. On some of his ambassador posts, he had a large number of side accreditations and was thus one of the few Swedish diplomats who served in more than 25 countries. Overall, he visited more than 140 countries during his life. Rösiö also penned more than 500 articles after his retirement from the Foreign Service, many of which were later published in anthologies. He was a restless observer of events, both at home and abroad, and perhaps most remembered by his books is ''Yrke: diplomat'' (1988) ccupation: diplomatwhich gives a full introduction to what the diplomatic profession entails.

Personal life

In 1955 he married Joan Binns (born 1930). They divorced and in 1969 Rösiö married Görel Pernvik, daughter of the managing director Allan Pernvik and Barbro (née Hermansson). He had two children; Josefine Hjelm and Adrian Rösiö.

Bibliography

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References

External links