The Washington Diplomat

Appointments - August 2009

Argentina
Roberto Diez assumed the position of counselor on April 20.

Silvina Khatcherian assumed the position of second secretary on Feb. 2.

Gustavo Lunazzi assumed the position of counselor on Feb. 13.

Eritrea
Abraham Kahsai assumed the position of deputy chief of mission in March.

Greece
Vassilis Kaskarelis has been appointed ambassador of Greece to the United States on June 24, having previously served as Greece’s permanent representative to the European Union in Brussels since 2004. Prior to that, he was the Greek permanent representative to NATO in Brussels (2000-04), while also serving as negotiator for the confidence-building measures between Greece and Turkey (2000-03), as well as deputy permanent representative of Greece to the United Nations in New York (1995-2000). Between 1976 and 1993, Ambassador Kaskarelis served in Ankara (Turkey), in Nicosia (Republic of Cyprus), in Venice (Italy) as consul, in Berlin (Germany) as head of the Greek Military Mission and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall as consul general, and in Athens at the Turkish Desk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1993 to 1995, he was also head of the cabinet of the secretary-general at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ambassador Kaskarelis graduated from the Universities of Thessaloniki and Athens, where he studied economics, politics and law. He and his wife, Anna Kaskarelis, have two sons, Dionyssis and Loucas.

Israel
Michael B. Oren was appointed ambassador of Israel to the United States on June 25. A graduate of Princeton and Columbia Universities, Ambassador Oren has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. Formerly, he was the Lady Davis Fellow at Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, and the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale and Georgetown in the United States. Ambassador Oren has written extensively for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. His two most recent books — “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East” and “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present” — were both New York Times bestsellers, also winning the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year prize, a National Council of the Humanities Award, as well as the National Jewish Book Award. Raised in New Jersey, where he was an activist in Zionist youth movements and a gold-medal winning athlete in the Maccabia Games, Ambassador Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and an IDF spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009. He also acted as an Israeli emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, as an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations, and as the government’s director of inter-religious affairs. In addition, he has testified before Congress and briefed the White House on Middle Eastern affairs. Ambassador Oren is married to Sally, and they have three children, Yoav, Lia and Noam.

Luxembourg
Mario Wiesen assumed the position of consul in August, replacing Marc Godefroid.