NEW INDIAN AMBASSADOR TO AFGHANISTAN

UNCLAS NEW DELHI 005118 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR IN AF SUBJECT: NEW INDIAN AMBASSADOR TO AFGHANISTAN ¶1. (U) The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has announced that Jayant Prasad, presently serving as India's PermRep in Geneva, has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to Afghanistan, succeeding Rakesh Sood. ¶2. (SBU) COMMENT: U.S. diplomats who worked with him say Prasad is an entrepreneur in the mold of former MEA Joint Secretary, Americas (2003-2006) S. Jaishankar. Prasad was SIPDIS Joint Secretary, MEA Americas Division from 2000 to 2003 - a crucial period that witnessed the ignition of stronger bilateral/strategic relations between India and the United States. His appointment to Afghanistan is a welcome boon and an opportunity to expand U.S.-Indian cooperation in Afghanistan. Prasad's biography follows below. END COMMENT. -------------- BEGIN JAYANT PRASAD'S BIOGRAPHY: -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Jayant Prasad (57) served as the Joint Secretary, Americas Division, MEA, New Delhi, from November 2000 to February 2004 prior to his current assignment in Geneva as Permanent Representative. Before that, he was Joint Secretary in the Communication Vigilance (CNV) Division, an SIPDIS office responsible for employee oversight for one year. Prasad served as Ambassador to Algiers from 1995 to 1998 after serving as a Counselor in India's EEC Mission in Belgium (1992-1995). He also served as Staff Officer for the Foreign Secretary; First Secretary at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN in Geneva; and as Deputy Secretary in the United Nations Division of the MEA from SIPDIS 1988 to 1991. In his present capacity, he is also a Member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. ¶4. (SBU) Prasad was born in New Delhi. His father, Bimal Prasad, was a senior professor at the Center for Diplomatic Studies in the capital's Jawaharlal Nehru University and served as India's Ambassador to Nepal from 1991 to 1994. Educated at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Ambassador Prasad, like his father, taught modern Indian history for two years at New Delhi's prestigious St. Stephen's College before joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1976. ¶5. (SBU) Prasad was a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard (1998-99),where he worked on a research project to study new parameters of India's foreign policy and to delineate India's strategic and technological environment through the year 2010. Sub-themes of this intellectual exercise included non-military threats to India's security and the implications of nuclear weapons tests for India's disarmament policy. Prasad also served as a rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva from 1986 to 87. Prasad speaks English, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. ¶6. (SBU) Jayant Prasad is married to Bhupinder Prasad, an Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1976 batch, who has held a number of responsibilities in the New Delhi government such as Private Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor of New Delhi. She has been posted for the past three years in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and has direct knowledge of these islands, including their aboriginal tribes. MULFORD