India for Kamalesh Sharma as Commonwealth Secretary General

New Delhi, Jun 5 (UNI) India today said it had decided to put forward the candidature of Mr Kamalesh Sharma, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, for the post of the Commonwealth Secretary-General.

India ''believes that Ambassador Sharma is eminently equipped to undertake this responsibility by virtue of the great interest he has shown in multilateral global affairs and in both South-South and North-South relations,'' the foreign office said in a statement.

Mr Sharma also had also gained experience in these areas in the course of his distinguished diplomatic career, as well as the assignment which he had undertaken on behalf of the United Nations, it said.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General is the Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Secretariat, which is the main inter-governmental agency of the Commonwealth.

The Secretary General is elected by Heads of Government for no more than two four-year terms.

The second term of the current Secretary-General is coming to an end in March 2008 and his successor will be elected at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala in November this year.

As a Foreign Service officer, Ambassador Sharma served with great distinction in many assignments. At headquarters, all three of his assignments dealt with human resource and skills development in the developing world and a wide range of development related issues, and specifically also the areas of trade, finance and technology.

As India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Ambassador Sharma was spokesperson for developing countries in UNCTAD during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations.

As Permanent Representative in New York, he chaired the Working Group on Financing for Development and the successful consensus building that he achieved led to the conference yielding the 'Monterrey Consensus' in the conference in Mexico.

He was closely engaged in the process which led to the formulation and adoption of the Millennium Development Goals.

Advancement of women's rights and the challenge of poverty eradication have been Ambassador Sharma's special concerns.

As the first Special Representative of UN Secretary-General to independent East Timor, Ambassador Sharma was directly engaged in all aspects of nation building and safeguarding its security and his contribution was widely recognised. His contribution and experience therefore extends to discharging practical responsibility on behalf of the international community in an important and complex assignment and goes beyond the conference room.

In his current position as a member of the Board of Governors of Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation since 2004, Ambassador Sharma has taken very keen interest in the activities and advocacy of the Commonwealth, and guided the Government in India's close engagement with the Commonwealth during this period. He has represented India at the meetings of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group in February and November 2005 and led India's delegation at the pre-CHOGM Foreign Ministers Meeting in Malta.

Ambassador Sharma has often spoken on the challenges of globalisation and the facets of both opportunity and threat that developing societies are confronted with in this era of rapid transformation. He has edited a book on this theme entitled 'Rethinking the Global Challenge'.

UNI