Rizwan Saeed Shaikh to be appointed new FO spokesperson

ISLAMABAD: The government has in principle decided to appoint Ambassador Rizwan Saeed Sheikh as new spokesman of the Foreign Office in place of Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, who has been posted as Ambassador to France.

The decision would be announced before the departure of the incumbent spokesperson to Paris later this month. Ambassador Sheikh is likely to take charge of Additional Secretary Americas replacing yet another astute diplomat Syed Faisal Niaz Tirmizi who has been appointed Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Well-placed diplomatic sources told ‘The News’ on Sunday that some important changes in the senior cadre of the Foreign Office would be put in place in a couple of weeks. A career diplomat, Rizwan Sheikh, has over two and a half decades of experience. He has served as the country’s permanent representative to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) before returning home. Earlier, he served as deputy chief of mission (DCM) at the Washington embassy, and joint secretary at the National Security Division (NSD) Islamabad, where he was primarily engaged in drafting Pakistan’s first National Security Policy. He had also served for around five years as the OIC secretary general’s spokesman and executive director OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC).

He served as a member of Pakistan’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva. As Pakistan’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the OIC, Ambassador Rizwan Sheikh led inter-governmental negotiations that finalised the new OIC charter during Pakistan’s chairmanship of the OIC’s Council of Foreign Ministers in 2007-08. He served on important positions at headquarters, including the UN, the US and the South Asia divisions. He also advocated the OIC’s positions at important venues, including the National Press Club in Washington DC, Wilton Park in London and several others.