He was one of the four “peacemakers” dubbed TIME’s Men of the Year in 1993 — paired with Frederick W. de Klerk — in addition to another influential duo, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. The magazine chose these two pairs of world leaders because:
“Their common genius was that they saw in the convergence of circumstances a ripeness of moment — and that they acted…None of the men much liked his partner. They were bound together, two by two, as if in an impossible combination: they became each other’s steptwins. Their negotiations at times resembled nothing so much as the conflict they were trying to resolve.”