UN appoints new top envoy to country

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed German peacekeeping official Tom Koenigs as his top envoy in Afghanistan, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed on Wednesday in the Afghan capital Kabul. Koenigs, who had previously worked on the same post in Guatemala and also served as a senior official with the UN mission in Kosovo, replaces Jean Arnault, who had been Annan's special representative in the country since early 2004. “The UN Security Council approved the appointment of Mr Koenigs on 21 December. No date has been set yet for him to assume his position but it is likely to be in the first few months of next year,” said Aleem Siddique, a UNAMA spokesman. Tom Koenigs was born on 25 January 1944 in Damm, Germany, approximately 150 km north of Berlin. He studied economics and politics in Berlin and Frankfurt. After studying business administration he worked as an academic tutor in political economics and economic theory at Berlin Free University. He was appointed Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Kosovo from 1999-2002 with responsibility for general civil administration. He then headed the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), as Special Representative of the Secretary-General, from 2002 until its close, after 10 years, at the end of 2004. The mission was established to monitor the peace agreement signed in 1996 between the former parties to the civil war. In January 2005 he was appointed Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid at the German Federal Foreign Office. Annan's two previous envoys in Afghanistan, Arnault and Lakhdar Brahimi, have played key advisory roles in the years following the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Afghanistan's first popularly elected parliament in more than 30 years met for the first time on 19 December.