The new Permanent Representative of Bulgaria to the United Nations, Georgi Velikov Panayotov, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today. From 2014 to his latest appointment, Mr. Panayotov was Head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a position he also held between 2007 and 2010.
A career diplomat, he was a Political Officer and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Bulgaria in Washington, D.C., from 2010 to 2014, prior to which he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Bulgaria in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2002 to 2007. Between 2000 and 2002, he was Deputy Head of the Ministry’s Multilateral Co-operation in the South-Eastern Europe Department. From 1995 to 2000, he served as a Political Officer at the Embassy of Bulgaria in Tirana, Albania.
Fluent in English, German, Russian and Albanian, Mr. Panayotov holds a master’s degree in politics from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. Born in 1968, he is married and has two children.