VICTORIA, Australia -- Much criticism has been written about U Thant, the third secretary general of the United Nations, who died from cancer 25 years ago on Nov. 25, 1974. While some of it may be just, much of it is not.

Journalist Rosemary Righter states in her book, "Utopia Unlimited," that current U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is "the best secretary general since Dag Hammarskjold." Righter goes on to say that "U Thant was invisible, (Kurt) Waldheim was a liar, (Javier) Perez de Quellar would not make waves if he jumped out of a boat and (Boutros) Boutros-Ghali was always mouthing anticolonial rhetoric." She further adds that when Annan became secretary general, some people warned him not to be "a first-year U Thant."

Leaving the admirers of other secretaries general to defend them, I'd like to know what Righter meant when she said that. One wonders whether Righter heard of U Thant's pivotal role in bringing back the United States and the Soviet Union from the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. The October 1962 incident, which took place 11 months after U Thant was unanimously elected U.N. secretary general, was the most dangerous crisis in the postwar period. When it was over, Time magazine praised his "instrumental role" in averting war.