"The Cruiser" dies

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Conor Cruise O'Brien, an Irish diplomat, politician, man of letters and public intellectual who staked out an independent position for Ireland in the United Nations and, despite his Catholic origins, championed the rights of Protestants in Northern Ireland has. He was 91

Once described by the social critic Christopher Hitchens as "an internationalist, a wit, a polymath and a provocateur," Mr. O'Brien was a rare combination of scholar and public servant who applied his erudition and stylish pen to a long list of causes, some hopeless, others made less so by his combative reasoning. When called upon, he would put down his pen and enter the fray, more often than not emerging bruised and bloodied.

As a diplomat, he helped chart Ireland's course as an independent, anticolonialist voice at the United Nations and played a critical role in the United Nations intervention in Congo in 1961. 

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