The UN Security Council gave UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres the green light to appoint Bulgarian Nikolay Mladenov and Norwegian Tor Wennesland as new envoys to Libya and the Middle East, respectively, according to media reports.
The UN Security Council agreed to appoint Mladenov, as the new UN envoy to Libya, to succeed the Lebanese Ghassan Salame. Since 2015, Mladenov has served as the UN envoy to the Middle East, and he will be succeeded by Wennesland.
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Tor Wennesland[/caption]
The appointment of Mladenov comes ten months after the resignation of Salame.
The appointment of the Bulgarian diplomat comes after Washington rejected two African candidates to assume this position.
Guterres had proposed the name of the former Algerian foreign minister, Ramtane Lamamra, to succeed Salame, but Washington rejected this nomination so that the Secretary-General put forward the name of another African candidate, the former Ghanaian Minister whose candidacy met the same US rejection.
Mladenov, 48, has served as the UN envoy to the Middle East since 2015.
During his mission, he faced many challenges: periods of tension between Gaza and Israel, the acceleration of Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories, internal pisions among Palestinians, and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Mladenov held many discussions with Egypt to avoid a military escalation between Israel and the Hamas movement that controls the Gaza Strip.
He will be succeeded by the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Wennesland, 68, a Norwegian diplomat specializing in Middle East issues and who has held several positions in Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Cairo.
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