Having gone ahead with decisions to appoint heads of mission to US and Pakistan,the government has now also taken a call on Indias Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Its learnt that Hardeep Singh Puri,a Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs,has been chosen for this high-profile job. Puri will take the place of Nirupam Sen,whose term ended on March 31,and has since been appointed Special Senior Advisor to the UNGA President. Sen along with former Indian Ambassador to US Ronen Sen had been given repeated extensions and the final one ended last month. A 1974-batch IFS officer,Puri is known in diplomatic circles as an expert on WTO issues. He is an experienced hand in multilateral institutions and has served as Indias Permanent Representative to the UN institutions in Geneva. Currently,he is Secretary (Economic Relations) in the MEA. Prior to this,he was Indias Ambassador to Brazil where he played an important role in getting the Indian-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) partnership to expand areas of economic cooperation. Brazil was also a very important country to convince ahead of the Nuclear Suppliers Group meet on the Indian nuclear deal given that it had given up its weapons programme and signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Puris appointment comes after the government chose Indias envoy in Germany Meera Shankar as next Ambassador to US and Sharat Sabharwal as High Commissioner to Pakistan. With this decision,key high profile diplomatic posts that fell vacant in the past couple of months have been filled. This was done overruling the other view in the government that these decisions be left pending for the next regime. The next high profile diplomatic post falling vacant would be that of Foreign Secretary in July for which the top contenders are two 1973-batch officers Nirupama Rao and Nalin Surie. Rao,who is Indian Ambassador to China,is said to be the front runner with current government and may even return to the headquarters before the next government takes charge.
