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U.N. names envoy to lead Syria chemical weapons mission

14 October 2013 08:50 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Victoria Dementyeva – APA. The United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon Sunday named Sigrid Kaag to lead the U.N.’s joint mission with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to eliminate Syria’s arsenal, APA reports quoting Agence France-Presse. The U.N. Security Council, which is set to vote on Kaag’s nomination Wednesday, has formally approved a first joint mission with the OPCW. The new envoy was appointed in a letter from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon addressed to Azerbaijan’s U.N. envoy Agshin Mehdiyev, who holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council.

Kaag is a U.N. assistant secretary-general working at the U.N. Development Program and has served since 2007 as the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Amman. The mission she is set to lead must include about a hundred staff members and be based in Damascus, with a second base in Cyprus.