NEW HEAD OF EUROPEAN COMMISSION DELEGATION SUBMITS APPOINTMENT LETTER

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

Fernando M. Valenzuela, of Spain, the new head of the delegation of the European Commission to the United Nations, today submitted his letter of appointment to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Valenzuela, who served as the Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva in the early 1990s, has been with the Commission since 2000.  Over the past five years, he has served, respectively, as the Commission’s Political Director/Deputy Director-General responsible for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Multilateral Affairs, relations with North America, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the European Environment Agency (EEA); as well as the Chairman of the Commission’s standing Task Force for Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management.

Throughout his distinguished diplomatic career, Mr. Valenzuela held other United Nations posts, including Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) (1999), and from 1993-1994, Chairman of the Security Council Compensation Committee.

He also held a host of positions in his country’s Foreign Ministry, including, most recently, as Ambassador at Large and Coordinator for the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe (1999-2000), the Deputy Director-General of the Foreign Service, Finance and Administration (1983-1985), as well as the Vice-President of the Ministry’s Procurement Board.  Early in his career, he was the head of Technical and Economic Issues in the cabinet of Minister for Foreign Affairs (1975-1977).

From 1983 to 1985, Mr. Valenzuela served his Government as the Director-General of the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation and Latin America, Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Commission for International Cooperation, and Chairman of the working group in charge of reconstructing the State Secretariat for International Cooperation.  From 1980 to 1983, he served as Counsellor, in Spain’s Permanent Delegation to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and from 1996 to 1999, he served as Spain’s Ambassador to Canada.

Mr. Valenzuela received a degree in International Studies from Madrid’s DiplomaticSchool, and earned a Master in Law at Spain’s University of Zaragoza.  He also studied at the University of Paris, where he received a certificate from the Institute of International Studies.

Born in December 1948, Mr. Valenzuela is married with three children.

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