New Delhi: Senior diplomat Parvathaneni Harish, currently India’s ambassador to Germany, was on Wednesday named the next permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, one of the most crucial posts in multilateral diplomacy.
Senior diplomat Parvathaneni Harish is currently India’s ambassador to Germany (File Photo)
Harish will succeed Ruchira Kamboj, the first woman to hold the position in New York. She retired at the beginning of June, and the post has been vacant since then. An officer of the 1990 batch of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Harish has held key positions at the headquarters and in Indian missions around the world.
He is expected to take up the assignment in New Delhi shortly, according to a statement from the external affairs ministry on Wednesday that announced his appointment.
HT had reported on June 7 that Harish was a frontrunner for the post of permanent representative to the UN in New York.
Harish will be the public face of Indian diplomacy at the UN, including bodies such as the General Assembly. He will take over shortly before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit the US in September to participate in a session of the UN General Assembly, people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
He has served as additional secretary (economic relations) in the external affairs ministry, leading the economic diplomacy division that deals with economic relations with other countries and liaises with all line economic ministries of the government. He also led the multilateral economic relations division and was the deputy sherpa for the G20, G7, Brics, and IBSA.
Harish has served in the Indian missions in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and was India’s representative to the Palestinian Authority stationed in Gaza. He also served on secondment to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as chief of the policy analysis unit at the body’s headquarters in Gaza.
He also did stints in the East Asia and external publicity divisions in the external affairs ministry. He served as the officer on special duty to the vice president during 2007-2012, the consul general in Houston during 2012-2016, and as the ambassador to Vietnam during 2016-2019.
Harish is a gold medallist in mechanical engineering from Osmania University College of Engineering in Hyderabad and studied at the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta. He also studied Arabic at the American University of Cairo and passed the examination with distinction.
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