Colombian Foreign Minister elected CAN Secretary General

Lima, July 7, 2002. Today, in Lima, Colombia’s Foreign Minister, Guillermo Fernández de Soto, was voted in as Secretary General of the Andean Community (CAN) for a term of 5 years.

The Andean Council of Foreign Ministers in enlarged meeting with the Ministers of Trade of the CAN countries elected by consensus the highest-level executive authority of the integration movement.

Fernández de Soto will be succeeding Sebastian Alegrett, whose 5-year term at the head of the General Secretariat comes to an end on August 1st.

The Secretary General-elect is a native of Bogotá. A lawyer and economist by profession, he holds a degree from the Universidad Javeriana and studied international relations at Georgetown University and Conflict Management at Harvard.

He worked in the United States as Legal Counsel to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (1984-1985) and, on his return to his home country, assumed the position of Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs (1985-1986).

Mr. Fernández de Soto served as Consultant to the United Nations Development Program, headed the UN Technical Mission for the drafting of the Special Economic Cooperation Plan for Central America, and worked as Consultant to the United Nations General Secretariat for the Truth Commission in El Salvador’s Peace process.

Other positions held include: Dean of the School of International Relations of Jorge Tadeo Lozano University; Advisor to the Foreign Ministry; Executive Secretary of the Rio Group (1990-1992); Executive Secretary of the Presidential Commission on Colombian-Venezuelan Border Integration and Chairman of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce up until 1998.

On August 7, 1998, President Andrés Pastrana Arango appointed him Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Colombia, a position that won him widespread recognition both in and outside the country.

His efforts have earned him the highest-level awards conferred by the governments of France, Honduras, Venezuela, Panama and Chile.

At the enlarged meeting, Bolivia proceeded to turn over to Colombia the Chairmanship of the Andean Presidential Council, together with the Chairs of the Andean Integration System bodies, in compliance with the requirement for annual rotation in alphabetical order established in Decision 427, article 2.