NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF MALTA PRESENTS CREDENTIALS TO DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF UNOG

Victor Camilleri, the new Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations Office at Geneva, today presented his credentials to Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Prior to his appointment to Geneva, since 2003, Mr. Camilleri had been serving as Malta's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. As Ambassador to Belgium and Permanent Representative of Malta to the European Union, from 1997 to 2003, he formed part of the Maltese team that negotiated Malta's membership in the European Union. In his 40-year career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Camilleri has occupied a number of senior administrative and diplomatic posts, including that of Permanent Secretary, from 1993 to 1996.

Mr. Camilleri was Chef de Cabinet to the Maltese Foreign Minister de Marco during Ambassador de Marco's Presidency of the forty-fifth session of the UN General Assembly, in 1990 and 1991. Mr. Camilleri has extensive experience in multilateral affairs; among others, from 1981 to 1984, he acted as Malta's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, as well as head of the Multilateral Section at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Valleta. He is actively interested in the promotion of information technology as a tool of diplomacy and is Chairman of the Working Group on Informatics at the United Nations.

Mr. Camilleri was educated at the Lyceum, Malta, Birmingham University in the United Kingdom, and Columbia University in New York City.

Born on 8 October 1942, Mr. Camilleri is married with two children.