PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF AFGHANISTAN PRESENTS CREDENTIALS (11 January 2002)

(Based on information received from the Protocol and Liaison Service.)

Ravan A.G. Farhâdi, the Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations, today presented his credentials to Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Farhâdi first presented his credentials to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on 30 April 1993. Under the interim agreement for a new government in Afghanistan, signed in Bonn, Germany, on 5 December 2001, he was requested to resubmit them.

Since 1993, Mr. Farhâdi has served as Vice Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Mr. Farhadi began his professional career as a Lecturer in the History of Political Thought at the University of Kabul's School of Law and Political Science, in 1955. He left in 1958 to serve as First Secretary in his country's embassy in Karachi, Pakistan, a post he held until 1961. From 1961 to 1962, he was Director of United Nations Affairs at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following that, he was appointed Counsellor and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Afghan Embassy in Washington, D.C.

He returned to Kabul in 1964 as the Director-General for Political Affairs in his country's Foreign Ministry (1964-1968). Subsequently, he was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister (1968-1973). He also served as Secretary of the Council of Ministers of the Afghan Government (1965-1971). In 1973, Mr. Farhâdi was appointed Ambassador to France. As a member of the Advisory Scientific Commission of Afghanistan's Ministry of Culture (1975-1978), he organized international seminars in cultural fields.

From 1979 to 1980, Mr. Farhâdi was a political prisoner during the former Soviet Union's presence in Afghanistan.

Mr. Farhâdi was an Associate Professor at the University of Paris, Pantheon-Sorbonne (1981-1985). In the summer of 1985, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in
Canberra. He was then an Associate Professor at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California at Berkeley (1985-1992).

Mr. Farhâdi received his bachelor's degree from the Istiqlal College, Kabul, in 1948. He also holds diplomas from the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, Department of International Relations (1952); and from the Institut des Hautes Études Internationales, University of Paris (1955). He studied Indo-Iranian philology at the École Practique des Hautes Études of the University of Paris, and received a doctorate from that institution in 1955.

Mr. Farhâdi was born in Kabul on 23 August 1929. He is married with three children.