Biographical Note

NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF SÃO TOMÉ AND PRINCIPE PRESENTS CREDENTIALS

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

Ovidio Manuel Barbosa Pequeno, the new Permanent Representative of São Tomé and Principe to the United Nations, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan today.

Concurrent with his new United Nations posting, Mr. Pequeno has also been accredited as his country’s ambassador to the United States, Canada and Brazil.  Prior to taking up these responsibilities, he served as his country’s Minister for Foreign Affairs since April 2004.  Between December 1999 and April 2004, he was Ambassador to Taiwan, Republic of China.

A trained journalist, Mr. Pequeno headed the Angola Bureau of the Voice of America in 1998-1999 and was Senior Editor at that service in Washington, D.C., from 1990 until 2000.

In a previous diplomatic assignment, he was accredited to Canada, while serving as First Secretary based at the Permanent Mission of São Tomé to the United Nations between 1983 and 1990.  Prior to that assignment he was Permanent Secretary ad interim, and Director of International Economic Affairs and Chief of the Department of Information in the Ministry of Information and Culture before that.

Mr. Pequeno was educated at Pacific Western University and the Institute of Technology of New York, both in the United States.

He was born in 1954 and is married.

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