NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF CAPE VERDE PRESENTS CREDENTIALS

Biographical Note

NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF CAPE VERDE PRESENTS CREDENTIALS

(Based on information received from the Protocol and Liaison Service.)

Luis de Matos Monteiro da Fonseca, the new Permanent Representative of Cape Verde to the United Nations, today presented his credentials to Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Mr. da Fonseca has been a career diplomat with the rank of Ambassador at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Communities of Cape Verde.  Since 1999, he has served as Ambassador of Cape Verde to Austria and, concurrently, as Permanent Representative to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, both in Vienna. 

From 1997 to 1999, he was Director-General for Foreign Policy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Praia.  For two years prior to that at the Ministry, he was Director-General for Political and Cultural Affairs. 

From 1991 to 1994, he was Ambassador to the former Soviet Union and later to the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Estonia and Lithuania.  From 1987 to 1991, he was Ambassador to the Netherlands and, concurrently, to the European Communities, United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Nordic countries.

In other posts, Mr. da Fonseca served as Minister Plenipotentiary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1986), Head of the Town Committee (1984-1986), National Secretary for the Cape Verdean Youth Organisation (1978-1984), and First Secretary of the Chair at the National Assembly (1975-1978).  He was regional coordinator for St. Vincent Island during the transition period from colonial rule to independence (1974-1975).

As a young leader of the independence movement, Mr. da Fonseca spent several years in prison in Mindelo and Praia and at the prison camp of Tarrafal (1967-1973). 

Among his other posts, Mr. da Fonseca served as a member of the Cape Verdean delegations to the thirty-eighth, fiftieth, fifty-first and fifty-second sessions of the United Nations General Assembly.  He headed his country's delegations to the Oslo Conference on Refugees and Displaced Persons (1988) and the Conference of Information Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement in Pyongyang (1993).  He also

headed the delegation to the fifty-third session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva (1997).

He attended secondary school in Cape Verde and later studied economics at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Economicas e Financas in Lisbon.

Mr. da Fonseca was born on 17 May 1944 in Santo Antao, Cape Verde.  He is married to Maria Fernanda Benros Lima da Fonseca.  They have two children, Rosa Maria and Djassi.

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