Former UN Secretary General U Thant was from which country?

U Thant (22 January 1909 – 25 November 1974) was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations, from 1961 to 1971. He was chosen after his predecessor Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in September 1961.

After World War II Thant was recruited for government service by U Nu and General U Aung San, leader of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League. In 1952–53 he was a Myanmar (Burmese) delegate to the UN, becoming his country’s permanent UN representative in 1957. He was vice president of the UN General Assembly in 1959.

After the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, the United States and the Soviet Union, failing to agree on a permanent successor, accepted U Thant as a compromise candidate for the acting secretaryship, to which he was elected on Nov. 3, 1961. On Nov. 30, 1962, he was elected permanent secretary general, and he was re-elected for five years on Dec. 2, 1966; he retired at the end of 1971. A devout Buddhist, he sought to apply the principles of detachment and concentration to the solving of international problems.