ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to appoint seasoned diplomat Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry as Pakistan’s new ambassador to the United States, the Foreign Office announced on Wednesday.

Fifty-nine-year-old Chaudhry, who is presently serving as foreign secretary, will join his new assignment in Washington, DC in March.

On Monday, the prime minister appointed Tehmina Janjua as the new foreign secretary. She became the first woman in the country’s history to have been appointed foreign secretary.

While Ms Janjua is set to take over her new assignment in the first week of the next month, Mr Chaudhry will replace the incumbent Jalil Abbas Jilani, who had also served as foreign secretary prior to his appointment as Pakistan’s ambassador to the US in November 2013.

Ambassador Chaudhry is a career diplomat with over 36 years of bilateral and multilateral experience in the field of diplomacy. He has been serving as foreign secretary since December 2013. Earlier, he served as the spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs.

In the ministry of foreign affairs, he served as additional foreign secretary for the UN and disarmament affairs, and director general for relations with South Asian countries, in which capacity he remained closely associated with the peace process with India.

Overseas, he served as ambassador to the Netherlands, where he engaged in active public diplomacy in cooperation with the Pakistani community.

He also authored a book, Pakistan Mirrored to Dutch Eyes.

In his other overseas assignments, Mr Chaudhry has served as deputy permanent representative of Pakistan to the United Nations in New York, chef de cabinet to the secretary general of ECO in Tehran, and Pakistan embassies in Washington, Doha and Cairo.

Born on Feb 27, 1958, Mr Chaudhry holds a masters degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, Massachusetts, and a first-class-first BSc from Punjab University, Lahore. He is married and has three children.

Published in Dawn February 16th, 2017