Secretary-General Kofi Annan has designated Winston A. Tubman as Head of the United Nations Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS). Mr. Tubman will assume his duties next month in Nairobi, Kenya, where the Office is currently located.

Mr. Tubman, who is a national of Liberia, has since February 1998 been the Senior Advisor to the Force Commander of the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM). Prior to that he was assigned to the United Nations Peace Office in Zagreb, Croatia, and the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Eastern Slavonia (UNTAES).

He served as Principal Legal Officer in the Office of Legal Affairs from 1973-1975 and from 1991 to 1996, and with the United Nations Environment Programme from 1975-1977. He was also a member of the various United Nations legal teams. In 1993, he served as Executive Secretary of the Commission of Inquiry that investigated the ambush and killing of Pakistani peacekeepers in Mogadishu.

Earlier, he served in many areas of public life. In 1990, he was Chair of the Legal and Constitutional Committee of the group of Liberian political leaders meeting in Banjul, Gambia, that established an interim government in Liberia and later served as its Foreign Minister and as Minister of State.

He has occupied a number of senior positions in the Government of Liberia, including Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1979 to 1981 with concurrent accreditation as Ambassador to Cuba and Mexico, and before that, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs.

In 1968, he established the Tubman Law Firm in Monrovia, Liberia, and served as its Managing and Senior Partner over the next two decades. He is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of Liberia and taught law at the University of Liberia (1968-1972) and at universities in the United States. Mr. Tubman obtained his graduate degrees from the London School of Economics, Cambridge University and Harvard Law School.

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