SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS JAYANTHA DHANAPALA OF SRI LANKA AS UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS
Press Release
SG/A/661
BIO/3125
SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS JAYANTHA DHANAPALA OF SRI LANKA AS UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS
19980114 Secretary-General Kofi Annan this afternoon announced the appointment of Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka as Under Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs. He will assume his new responsibilities on 1 February.Mr. Dhanapala has held several positions with bodies concerned with disarmament. Prior to the current appointment, he was Diplomat-in-Residence at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. At the invitation of the Government of Australia, he served as a member of the Canberra Commission, a group of 17 eminent international personalities who published an influential report on nuclear disarmament in 1996.
He was President of the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. As Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Geneva, from 1984 to 1987, he also served as its representative to the Conference on Disarmament.
In 1987, he was appointed Director of the Geneva-based United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Mr. Dhanapala returned to his country's Foreign Ministry in 1992 as Additional Foreign Secretary. He served as Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the United States, with concurrent accreditation to Mexico, from January 1995 to 30 April 1997, when he opted for early retirement.
Mr. Dhanapala joined the Sri Lanka foreign service in 1965 after three years as a corporate executive in the private sector. Between 1965 and 1983, he held diplomatic appointments in London, Beijing, Washington, D.C. and New Delhi, in addition to being Director of the Non-Aligned Movement Division of the Foreign Ministry during Sri Lanka's chairmanship of the organization.
He has represented Sri Lanka at sessions of the United Nations General Assembly and at conferences of the Non-Aligned Movement and of the Commonwealth. He is the fifteenth recipient of the "Jit" Trainor Award for Distinction in the Conduct of Diplomacy given by the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
- 2 - Press Release SG/A/661 BIO/3125 14 January 1998
Mr. Dhanapala received a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree from the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka in 1961; studied Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in 1968 ; and obtained a Master of Arts degree in international studies at the American University in Washington, D.C. in 1978. He has published three books and several articles in international journals, and lectured in many countries.
Born on 13 December 1938, Mr. Dhanapala is married and has a daughter and a son.
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