Biographical Note

New Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka Presents Credentials

(Based on information provided by the Protocol and Liaison Service.)

The new Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, Palitha T.B. Kohona, presented his credentials today to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

From 2007 until his new appointment, Mr. Kohona served as Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, from April 2006, as Special Adviser to the President on the Peace Process and Secretary-General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process.

In 2005, Mr. Kohona led the United Nations legal delegation to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the invitation of that country’s Government, having served as Chief of the Organization’s Treaty Section in New York since 1995.

Prior to joining the United Nations, he worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia from 1983, heading its Trade and Investment Section under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization, and attached to the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations institutional mechanisms and dispute settlement unit in 1992.

Mr. Kohona led Australia’s delegation to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Trade and Development Board in 1988, and was posted to the Permanent Mission of Australia to the United Nations in Geneva the following year.

The holder of a doctorate from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kohona also has a Master of Laws degree from the Australian National University and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sri Lanka.

He was born in Matale, Sri Lanka.

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For information media • not an official record