Farid Zarif of Afghanistan has been appointed the secretary-general’s special representative for Kosovo. He succeeds Lamberto Zannier of Italy, who led the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) until June.
Zarif held a number of diplomatic posts in the past, among them Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations in the 1980s. In 1993, he joined the UN and was most recently director of Europe and Latin America Division in the Office of Operations of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Zarif graduated from Kabul University’s Faculty of Law and Political Science in 1973 and began working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the next year. He graduated from the Afghan Institute of Diplomacy and studied international relations and diplomacy at Oxford University.