Amritraj says helping the UN is the peak of his career

Top-ranked tennis player. The first professional athlete from India in any sport. Winner of 16 major tournaments. Successful businessman and actor. For Vijay Amritraj, all these accomplishments were just a prelude to the greatest honour of his life - becoming a Messenger of Peace for the United Nations.

"This is Everest," he said in an interview on the eve of his appointment today by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to his new role of helping to focus worldwide attention on the work of the United Nations. "This is ... the top of the mountain."

Since 1954, when the late U.S. comedian Danny Kaye became the first goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund, leading personalities in the arts, sports, literature and public life have been traveling around the world advertising the work of U.N. agencies. In 1997, Annan created a new title - Messenger of Peace - to try to raise global awareness of the U.N.'s primary work in promoting peace through a wide range of activities.

Amritraj becomes only the eighth Messenger of Peace, joining boxing great Muhammad Ali, actor Michael Douglas, basketball legend Magic Johnson, opera star Luciano Pavarotti, Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel, Italian author Anna Cataldi and French singer Enrico Macias.

"You can't even put any other kind of achievement in the same league," Amritraj said. "This is not just an honour to me. This is for my country, to have an Indian be able to do this."

Being a Messenger of Peace, he said, will give him the chance to work with children, especially those who are orphans and handicapped, as well as promoting AIDS awareness and helping people in neglected areas of the world.

The position is not a full-time job, nor is it a paid post. It is largely up to each Messenger - working with U.N. officials - to decide how to carry out the role.

As a child, Amritraj recalled, he spent about half of every year in the hospital because he suffered from a mild form of cystic fibrosis and dreamed of being a doctor and saving lives. When he was 10 years old, doctors advised him to play an outdoor sport and because his parents loved tennis, that's what he chose.

"I'd play for one minute and sit for five minutes. I also started running. I'd run for 10 yards and sit down for 10 minutes," he said. But three years later he was running 10 miles a day, and he was the number one tennis player in Asia at the age of 17. Two years later, he was in the world's top 10.

The tennis accolades followed - 16 singles titles, 13 doubles titles, 20 years of Davis Cup for India from 1969-89, wins against tennis greats from Rod Laver and Arthur Ashe to Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors.