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Annan appoints Guatemalan diplomat as new head of UN mission in Haiti

16 May 2006 ? Secretary-General Kofi Annan has informed the Security Council that he will appoint the Guatemalan ambassador to the European Union, Edmond Mulet, as his new Special Representative in Haiti and head of the UN Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) there, a United Nations spokesman said today.

Mr. Mulet, who succeeds Juan Gabriel Valdés of Chile, has served as ambassador to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg since June 2000, negotiating tourism, trade and economic cooperation, as well as political issues. He has also taken part in preparing several summit meetings between the EU and the Latin American and Caribbean group.

An active political presence in his country since 1976, Mr. Mulet has promoted human rights, democracy and the resolution of indigenous issues. When Guatemala was ruled by military regimes, he was forced to leave a number of times and was wrongly imprisoned for a short period in 1981 before winning the first of many elections to Guatemala?s National Congress in 1982.

In Congress, he was active in opposing the military?s ?self-amnesty? law, in reducing military benefits and in passing fiscal and other reforms, as well as the new Criminal Procedures Code. He was President of the National Congress from 1992 to 1993.

Mr. Mulet was appointed Guatemala?s Ambassador to the United States in 1993 and opposed President Serrano?s dissolution of Congress that year, resigning his post immediately and establishing the Organized International Guatemalan Resistance. When democratic institutions were re-established, he was re-appointed Ambassador.

Born in Guatemala in 1951, Mr. Mulet received his early schooling in his home country, Canada, the United States and Switzerland. He later attended Guatemala?s Universidad Mariano Galvez and became a lawyer