Ashraf Qazi named as new UN envoy for Sudan

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced today that Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, currently his Special Representative in Iraq”, will become his new Special Representative for Sudan, where the United Nations is working to relieve the crisis in Darfur and to improve the post-conflict situation in the south of the vast country.

Mr. Qazi, from Pakistan, will succeed Jan Pronk of the Netherlands, who left the post last year.

Born in 1942, Mr. Qazi had a long career with the Pakistani diplomatic service before he joined the UN in July 2004, including stints as his country’s ambassador to the United States, India, China, Russia, the then East Germany and Syria.

Announcing the appointment in Juba, southern Sudan, during a joint press conference with the President of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir, Mr. Ban cited Mr. Qazi’s diplomatic skills and his lengthy experience in making the selection.

Mr. Ban is currently on his first visit to Sudan to “lock in progress” made so far to end the crisis in Darfur and to observe first-hand the situation on the ground ahead of the deployment of a massive joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping operation.

That force, to be known as UNAMID, will have some 26,000 peacekeepers at full deployment to quell the violence in Darfur. At least 200,000 people have died and more than two million others forced to flee their homes since 2003 in the impoverished region on Sudan’s western flank because of fighting between rebel groups, Sudanese Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias.

In the south, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) is working to implement the January 2005 comprehensive peace agreement ending a separate north-south civil war that raged for two decades.