Secretary-General Appoints Jarmo Sareva of Finland Director of United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced the appointment of Jarmo Sareva of Finland as Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) for a period of one year.

Mr. Sareva will succeed Theresa Hitchens of the United States to whom the Secretary-General is grateful for her dedicated service and able leadership of the Institute.

Mr. Sareva has a wealth of experience both in the field of disarmament and with the United Nations disarmament machinery.  He is currently the Deputy Secretary-General of the Conference on Disarmament and Director of the Conference on Disarmament Secretariat and Conference Support Branch (Geneva Branch) of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs.

Prior to that, he was Chief of the Disarmament and Peace Affairs Branch at the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management and Secretary of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) of the United Nations General Assembly.  Mr. Sareva was Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations in New York, during which time he also served as Chairman of the First Committee (2003) and as the Coordinator of the budget negotiations for the 2006-2007 biennium.  He was also the Special Assistant to the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.  From 2000 to 2001, Mr. Sareva was Chef de Cabinet of the Office of the President of the fifty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly.  He also served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Finland in Moscow from 1996 to 1998 and Director of Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-proliferation at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Helsinki, and as First Secretary at the Finnish Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Sareva holds a Master of Arts from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., and a Master of Science (political science) from the University of Turku in Finland.

Born in 1959, Mr. Sareva is married and has two daughters.

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*     This supersedes Press Release BIO/3527-GA/DIS/3245 of 16 September 2003.