Former UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali, a veteran Egyptian diplomat who helped negotiate his country’s landmark peace deal with Israel, has died at the age of 93. He led the United Nations in a chaotic 1990s tenure that began with hopes for peace after the Cold War. His five years at the helm remain controversial. He worked to establish the U.N.’s independence, particularly from the United States, at a time when the world body was increasingly called on to step into crises with peacekeeping forces, with limited resources.

After years of frictions with the Clinton administration, the United States blocked his renewal in the post in 1996, making him the only U.N. secretary-general to serve a single term. He was replaced by Ghanaian Kofi Annan.

In a 2005 interview with The Associated Press, Boutros-Ghali called the 1994 massacre in Rwanda — in which half a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days — “my worst failure at the United Nations.” But he blamed the United States, Britain, France and Belgium for paralyzing action by setting impossible conditions for intervention.

He and the U.N. came under further fire after Serb forces massacred 8,000 Muslims in July 1995 in Srebrenica under the eyes of a U.N. force that was supposed to be enforcing a safe zone.

Born Nov. 14, 1922, Boutros-Ghali studied in Cairo and Paris and became an academic, specialized in international law. After leaving the United Nations, Boutros-Ghali served from 1998 to 2002 as secretary-general of La Francophonie — a grouping of French-speaking nations. In 2004, he was named the president of Egypt’s new human rights council, a body created by Mubarak amid U.S. pressure to adopt democratic reforms.