The World: Ivor Richard: Man in the Middle

Ivor Richard: Man in the Middle

Dressed for the part, Ivor Richard, 44, Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations and currently chairman of the Rhodesian conference in Geneva, would make a splendidly old-fashioned John Bull. Burly, ebullient and pipe smoking, the bespectacled barrister is anything but timid—the description Nationalist Leader Joshua Nkomo applied to the British role in the negotiations. That much, at least, was made clear two days before the conference opened when Richard waded into what he called a "good verbal punch-up" with a member of an African nationalist delegation.

Complaining...