[This report does not necessarily reflect
the views of the United Nations]
ABIDJAN, 21 July (IRIN) - The
United Nations has confirmed the appointment of Alan Doss, a Briton with
several years experience of conflict resolution in West Africa, as the
new head of its large mission in Liberia, a UN spokesman said on Thursday.
For the past year Doss has been deputy head of the UN mission in neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire, where international mediators are still trying to end a civil war that broke out in 2002.
Before that, he held the same position in Sierra Leone, which is slowly recovering from a 1991-2001 conflict.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan informed the Security Council of his intention to appoint Doss as his new Special Representative in Liberia on 15 July.
The post has been vacant since Jacques Paul Klein, a charismatic American, departed from Monrovia at the end of April.
Doss, a soft-spoken 60-year-old veteran UN official, will take over the command of a 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Liberia.
He will also supervise a massive UN operation to assist hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people to return home as the country gears up for presidential and parliamentary elections on 11 October.
In the longer term, Doss faces the difficult task of persuading Liberia's notoriously corrupt government officials to mend their ways while at the same time securing international aid to help rebuild the country after a 14-year civil war which ended in August 2003.
Doss's previous assignments with the United Nations have included postings in Thailand, China, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Benin.
[ENDS]
[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: Irin@ocha.unon.org or Web: http://www.irinnews.org . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial sites requires written IRIN permission.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2005