ISLAMABAD, June 23: Riaz Mohammad Khan, a seasoned diplomat, will soon be occupying the strategically significant ambassadorial position in China, sources told Dawn on Sunday.

They said the government had already taken a decision to post Mr Khan as the new ambassador to Beijing in place of present envoy Riaz Khokkhar, who is to be appointed Foreign Secretary.

Riaz Mohammad Khan, currently the Additional Secretary, UN and European Community, has served as ambassador to Brussels and Kazakhstan, and held important position at the Pakistan mission in New York.

He has rich experience in multilateral diplomacy and is one of the central figures in the Geneva talks on Afghanistan. In the eighties, Riaz Khan was a resident scholar at the Georgetown University in Washington DC. He is also author of a book: ‘Untying the Afghan knot’.

This will be Riaz Khan’s last posting abroad before he retires. Interestingly, his first posting abroad in 1970 was also in Beijing, then Peking, where he learned the Chinese language.