Dr. Palitha Kohona new Foreign Secretary

COLOMBO: Dr. Palitha Kohona was yesterday appointed as the Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He received the appointment letter from President Mahinda Rajapaksa at Temple Trees yesterday.

A 20-year veteran of international diplomacy and the former head of UN's Treaty Section Dr. Kohona most recently functioned as the Director General of the Secretariat Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) and played a key role in facilitating two rounds of peace talks.

Dr. Kohona who hails from Matale received his secondary education at S. Thomas' College Mt. Lavinia, from where he went on to obtain LL.B (Hons) at the University of Sri Lanka and an LL.M from the Australian National University.

He obtained a Doctorate from Cambridge University, UK for the work, 'The Regulation of International Trade through Law', subsequently published by Kluwer, Netherlands. He is also an Attorney-at-Law.

Dr. Kohona was the Secretary of the UN Inter-Departmental Group established to report on measures to advance the international rule of law and he headed a working group tasks to make recommendations on improving the performance monitoring mechanisms in the Organisation. He led a UN legal delegation to North Korea in 2005 at the invitation of the DPRK government.

In February, he was a key speaker at a seminar organized in Canberra by the Australian Joint Parliamentary Committee on Treaties.

Prior to joining the UN, Dr. Kohona was with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia in 1983.

Posted to Geneva in 1989, he chaired the negotiating group that developed the compliance mechanism under the Montreal Protocol and was closely involved in the negotiation of major multilateral environmental agreements and in the Rio process.

Back in Australia in 1992, he was attached to the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations institutional mechanisms and dispute settlement unit and, subsequently, headed the Trade and Investment Section of the Department.

Under his stewardship many negotiations on investment protection agreements were initiated, including those with the Russian Federation, the Republic of Korea, Argentina and India.