Biographical Note

NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF SLOVAKIA PRESENTS CREDENTIALS

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

Peter Burian, the new Permanent Representative of Slovakia presented his credentials to Secretary-General Kofi Annan today.

Prior to his current assignment, since 2003, Mr. Burian worked at the Policy Planning and Analysis Department of his country’s Foreign Ministry and served as Ambassador-at-Large, Special Coordinator for United Nations Security Council membership.  Before that, he headed Slovakia’s Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Western European Union in Brussels (1999-2003).

Mr. Burian started his diplomatic career in 1983, when he joined the Middle East Department of the Czechoslovak Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  After a two-year assignment as Deputy Chief of Mission at his country’s Embassy in Beirut (1987-1989), he returned to that Department in 1991, to leave it in 1992 for the Embassy in Washington, D.C., where he worked as Second Secretary and later became Deputy Chief of Mission.  In 1997, he was appointed Director General for Human Dimension Affairs at the Foreign Ministry of Slovakia.

Mr. Burian graduated from the Middle East Department of St. Petersburg University in the Russian Federation in 1983, and also received a doctoral degree from ComeniusUniversity in Bratislava, Slovakia.  He attended Moscow’s DiplomaticAcademy from 1989 to 1991.

Born on 21 March 1959 in Hlohovec, Slovakia, Mr. Burian is married and has two sons.

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